Television of yester year was entertainment for the whole family.  A typical Friday night may consist of watching our favorite show on the sofa with a large bowl of popcorn with our favorite beverage.

The groovy 1960's ushered in a new era of television programming as broadcasts began to transition from black and white to color during this time. Lighthearted sitcoms and comedies ruled the day as some of the most-watched shows were series like The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Beverly Hillbillies and The Andy Griffith Show. There were countless shows of '60s that had a touch of the supernatural, science fiction or fantasy with Bewitched, Star Trek and The Addams Family being among the highest rated.

It’s almost like the 1950s bottled everyone up so much that the late 1960s exploded like an old pressure cooker. Women were showing more skin than ever before.

For the first time in the 19th Century, London, not Paris, was the center of the fashion world. The British Invasion didn’t stop with The Beatles. It swept into all parts of life, especially clothing.

Food

Party food in the sixties was fairly basic by today's standards. This spread, left, shows some firm party favourites from the 60s: gammon joint, pork pies, tomatoes, radishes, liver sausage, frankfurters,ox tongue, various luncheon meats and piccalilli.

Nibbles

Crisps were popular in the sixties. Alongside ready salted and salt and vinegar, Golden Wonder launched cheese and onion in 1962, smoky bacon in 1964, roast chicken in 1967 and beef and onion in 1969.

Nuts were also a favourite, brazils particularly, as they were a challenge to crack.

Another party favourite from the 60s was cheese and pineapple on cocktail sticks. Create a 60s' centre piece by halving a grapefruit, covering one half with silver foil and sticking the cheese and pineapples sticks into it. Alternatively try cheese and olives on cocktail sticks.

Other favourites:

Quiche and pizza were both known in the sixties, but would have been adventurous. Go for very basic Quiche Lorraine (cheese and bacon) or cheese and tomato pizza.

Dinner party menus

Asking friends around for dinner was gaining popularity in the sixties. Before the War it would have been an activity limited to the better off, but with the end of rationing in the fifties and a DIY boom, people were keen to show off their smart homes. A dinner party was a good way to do it.

Home cooking was popularised by Fanny and Johnny Craddock in the sixties

The other use of the duster is for the teacher to throw it at those naughty or sleeping students. Remember those chalk and duster marks left on the face once the duster hit your face. Back then, no parents seem to bother to complain and students also don’t bother to tell their parents too.

Of course this was also the age of the 11-plus, a series of tests and exams that the children in the top (oldest) class at junior school would take before moving on to secondary school. Pupils would practice previous papers in school in order to prepare for these tests, which included writing an essay, a maths paper and both verbal and non-verbal reasoning papers. The verbal reasoning would test a child’s command and use of English, whereas the non-verbal reasoning paper was designed to test a child’s IQ with a puzzles and problem-solving questions.