11 pictures of what life was like in Walsall in 1978. Are you in any of them?

Members of the Walsall ABC Cinema Saturday Morning Club were in party mood with a huge cake

placeholder image — Members of the Walsall ABC Cinema Saturday Morning Club were in party mood with a huge cake

In 1978 Boney M were top of the pops, crowds flocked to the cinemas to see John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John in Grease, and Ian Botham became the first England cricketer to score a century and then take eight wickets in a single test match.

It was also the year that Bruce George MP launched a charity bed push by Walsall's busmen, to raise £800 for emergency equipment at the town's general hospital.

This week, in the first of a series of features looking through our picture archives, we focus on 1978 in Walsall and the surrounding areas.

Leaving town was Dave Mackay, the former Scottish international midfielder, who had taken Walsall to sixth in the Third Division during his first season in charge at Fellows Park.

It had been quite a coup for the Saddlers to secure Mackay's services, just a couple of years after he had led Derby County to the league title. Sadly, his stay would be short-lived, having been offered £40,000 a year to move to Al-Arabi Kuwait - demonstrating that the lure of the Middle Eastern petro-dollars is not a new phenomenon in football.

Elsewhere, Willenhall's popular lock museum was about to reopen following a major revamp, while youngsters at Frank F Harrison School marked Shrove Tuesday with a traditional pancake race.

Home-made bread was all the rage in the late 1970s, as regular bakery strikes caused shortages around the region. It is not clear whether this was anything to do with the youngsters clamouring for the home-baked loaves at the St Michael and All Angels Church fair at Caldmore, but they certainly looked to be much in demand.

Work was about to commence on the new £7 million railway station above Walsall railway station in February, taking the town into a new era. Which is quite fitting, given that it will once more become the focus of the council's latest efforts to regenerate the town. The centre's construction was not without incident though, as another of these pictures illustrates.