Alison Steadman Britain's Home Truths

We Brits have a passion for property and, of course,

our national obsession is house prices.

How much to buy?

You're looking at about 1.7 million for an apartment like this.

But housing is about so much more than bricks and mortar.

Look at the smile on my face.

It's about who we are and how we choose to live.

75 years since the Beveridge Report vowed

to rebuild Britain's housing...

Slums must go.

..we're opening the door to Britain's home truths...

..from council houses...

..to suburban semis...

..high-rises...

..to country pads...

..in fact, anywhere we call home...

..to find out if, three quarters of a century later,

we really have built a better place to live.

The great British suburbs.

What do you think of when you hear that phrase?

Is it the mock Tudor houses?

Is it neighbours obsessively washing their car or mowing their lawn?

Or maybe it's twitching net curtains,

behind which all sorts of saucy secrets lie.

Perhaps it's even got some eccentric characters, like this guy,

living at the end of the cul-de-sac.

Generally, I find the standards in the country dropping

but the standards in my own environment

do not appear to be dropping.

Everything I want is in Cheam.

And let's not forget that in the suburbs

there's no place like gnome.

Well, in this episode

I want to convince you that there's more to the British suburbs

than those cliches. Whether it's in Cheam,

or Didsbury in Manchester, or even Milltimber in Aberdeen,

over half of us live in the cul-de-sacs and avenues of suburbia

and many more of us were brought up in it...

..including me.

Little Alison Steadman.

I was raised in the Anfield area of Liverpool

but suburbia has followed me throughout my career,

especially in the roles I've played on stage and screen,

whether it's Beverly in Abigail's Party...

Would you like a little gin and tonic, Sue?

Cos me and Ange are drinking gin and tonic, actually.

..Mrs Bennett in Pride and Prejudice,

or even Pam from Gavin & Stacey.

I did love playing Pam.

I've done the lot. Pilates - doesn't work. Can't do the cabbage soup

cos Your Lordship don't like the smell,

and now I can't even have a steak.

So, looking at these characters, you think,

"Well, where did I get that from? What was the influence?"

And was it my suburban background?

Did it make me the actress I am?

I don't know. It'd be good to go back and find out.

So, let's do that, shall we?

First up, I want to show you why my suburbia is so special,

so I'm on my way back to Sherwyn Road in Anfield,

where my suburban story began.

This might get a bit teary because, although my house is still there,

my parents are sadly no longer alive.

It's been over 20 years since I visited and, if I'm honest,

I'm not really sure how I'm going to react.

I think it'll make me really sad that my parents aren't there.

I've only seen the house once since my mum died over 20 years ago and

it made me so upset because my mum wasn't standing at the door...

SHE LAUGHS ..with her arms out,

the way she used to.

Oh..

And here we are. I'm back home.

Built in the 1930s, we lived in this classic suburban semi.

It's smaller than I remember

and there are certainly more cars around here

than when I was growing up,

when we could play in the street all day long.

It was a very, very nice road to grow up in.

It was very safe and there was a good community feeling.

Everybody knew everybody.

I was born in 1946, just after the war and a time of austerity.

We weren't exactly poor but nobody had much money.

Family roles were pretty traditional, too,

Mum in the kitchen and Dad at work.

-Hello, Daddy!

-Hello, son!

Hello, John. You're soon back!

Ha-ha! That didn't take me long, my dear.

And children knew their place as well,

which, for me, was usually in the garden, working.

And there used to be a privet hedge at one time here and it was like the

worst job. I used to get the job of cutting the hedge.

And I used to hate it.

Oh, these shears and the sweeping up the leaves.

And I have weeded this garden and the back garden

so many times for my dad.

'Unfortunately, I never got the reward I craved

'for all that gardening,

'the one thing most little girls in suburbia want.'

Cos I was never allowed a dog.

The only thing my parents wouldn't let me have was a dog

and so all the dogs that lived in the road,

I used to bring into the house

and keep them for as long as I could and then, obviously,

they'd have to go home.

# Something tells me something's gonna happen tonight... #

So, my home truth about the suburbia I grew up in is that it gave me a

safe and grounded childhood

and maybe even laid the foundations for my career.

But, now, let me try to convince you about why the wider British suburbs

are simply superb, too.

To help give me some perspective on things,

I'm going to the top of Liverpool's iconic radio tower with local

historian, Melissa Conboy.

First things first, though - can I see my old house from way up here?

Right, so, that's Anfield ground, the football ground,

and I used to live about 10-15 minutes walk from there.

When Liverpool were playing on a Saturday, my mum would say,

"Ooh, they've scored!"

-Cos we could hear the cheering.

-Because you could hear it?

-Yeah!

'OK, I'm sure you'll be relieved to hear I'm not just up here to talk

'about football.'

I also want to find out when Liverpool's suburbia first began.

Liverpool grew from the Docklands.

You can see the Albert Dock right there.

-Yeah.

-But right along this stretch of the Mersey,

you had Docklands throughout.

And this was where the working classes lived,

in small, low-lying areas,

back-to-back kind of terraced housing.

But the middle classes wanted to get away from kind of

the busyness, the dirtiness, the smelliness of all this.

So the middle classes moved slightly out and all around the Anglican

-cathedral that you can see there...

-Mmm.

-..was where the Georgians first

set up their new, kind of, affluent houses.

They are the ones that really start this idea of an aspiring,

suburban middle-class.

And this was true all over the country, not just in Liverpool.

So we've hotfooted down from the tower to check out what this

old-school suburbia looks like up close.

Of course, when people talk about Georgian architecture,

it's cities like Edinburgh and Bath that come to mind, but actually

Liverpool has one of the best-preserved

Georgian districts in the UK.

Imagine a horse and carriage coming along here, stopping,

elegant ladies get out in their dresses...

With their big hair.

And there's a shoe scraper.

-Exactly.

-I like a shoe scraper, yeah.

"Don't bring that mud in here, darling!"

Of course, the doorway is elevated off the street

and surrounded by these cast-iron railings.

These, again, were kind of the signs of the grand

nouveau-riche middle classes.

Yeah. A bit like today, with flash cars and...

Yeah, absolutely.

If you notice at the top,

the windows are actually smaller on that top floor.

And that was cos that was probably

where the servants would have lived.

Well, you notice here there's steps going down,

so there'd be a separate entrance, like a tradesman's entrance...

-Yeah.

-..for supplies, like food, coal.

So it would come in from the street and go directly down

-into the basement.

-And through this gate.

-Exactly.

I've got a delivery!

Straight in. You wouldn't have to deal with the elegant family

that live there.

Looking at these elaborate houses

you really get a sense of how much money must have been around in

Liverpool at that time.

Back then, a furnished townhouse could rent for around £200 a year

and there were plenty of takers.

In the 1800s, Liverpool, with its mighty port,

had more millionaires living here than anywhere else in the UK outside

of London. Today,

most of these houses are now split into rented accommodation,

flats and offices,

but if you did want to buy a whole one, it would cost you £600,000.

That's a lot of house for your money.

But there is a place where you can experience the luxury without taking

out a mortgage. Here,

in one of the city's most well-preserved boutique hotels,

where the interior design is pretty much how it might've been

back in the day.

OK. So, this would've been one of the early Georgian townhouses

of Liverpool.

And see how that kind of ornate decoration on the outside

carried on right inside.

-Yeah, lovely.

-Again, a show of wealth.

-Yeah.

-They want to show off.

I love the floor as well.

-Beautiful.

-Yeah, beautiful tile decoration.

Ah-ha!

So, this would have been the drawing room,

a place perfect for entertaining in Georgian times.

Still very elegant feel to it, hasn't it?

-Yeah.

-The lovely windows and the cornice.

Although this is a really

important and aspirational place to live,

but, throughout the century, we see a gradual move out,

away from the bustling city centre,

where the population doubles, and places like this, which has now,

by definition, become the inner-city,

start to get a bit run down.

Throughout the 19th and early 20th century,

urban populations were growing at frightening rates

all over the country as the Industrial Revolution took hold.

The result was inner-city slums, smog and pollution.

For those who could afford it, getting out somewhere cleaner,

fresher and altogether more leafy became a priority.

-ARCHIVE:

-Builders, house-buyers and land speculators,

please take note that the Southern Railway company are opening for

traffic on the 9th of July 1928.

The growth of railways provided middle-class commuters

with an escape route,

allowing them to live further from the centre of town,

and new communities grew up around the stations

of main commuter routes.

It's fresh air you need, old man.

Live at Croham Heights, South Croydon.

The type of houses that were being built in these new suburbs weren't

nearly as glamorous, or, indeed, spacious,

as the elegant townhouses I've just seen,

but they were to become Britain's most popular house type -

the suburban semi.

The heyday of their growth was, without a doubt, the 1930s,

when more than 4 million of them were built.

I've come to Woolton, on the outskirts of Liverpool,

where the imprint of these times is clear to see.

Put it bluntly, this place is full of semis.

As you can see, the typical design was a real mishmash of styles,

mixing retro pebble dash, brickwork and oak panelling,

with more modern Art Deco front doors.

Inside, meanwhile,

these houses were built for practicality more than style.

Out went the grand staircases and bedrooms of the Georgian townhouses

and in came kitchens with lots of cupboard space, a pantry,

two reasonable-size bedrooms and a box room, all very sensible.

In the 1930s, one of these would've cost less than £800.

Today, in a place like Woolton,

you'd be lucky to get change out of 250,000.

-Hello.

-Hello, Alison.

Hi. 'But in my experience,

'it's the people who live in these semis who really give the suburbs

'its soul. They have a quiet, gentle charm.'

People like Jed, who's been living here since before the war.

What was life like

when you were growing up as a child in the village?

It was magical, in my opinion.

Cos you're young and you've got your life ahead of you.

I come from a big family.

I had five brothers and three sisters.

Now, as luck had it, my father was never out of work,

so we didn't have much money but we weren't really poor.

You always had a meal on the table.

-That's right.

-That's important.

My bedroom window overlooked

-where the allotments are now down Vale Road.

-Mmm.

And of a night or an evening,

I'd sit in my bedroom and watch the sun set.

I grew up in Anfield but I went to school in Childwall,

I went to Childwall Valley High School.

And I suddenly, at 11, started horse riding

and of course a lot of that area was still countryside.

And I can remember being so excited,

seeing my first fox and going home and telling my parents.

And then, it seemed in no time at all,

-all that land became housing estates.

-Yes.

Has the village been spoiled, do you think,

now by certain developments?

Some buildings in the village were just demolished and modern buildings

-were put up, which didn't fit in with the village, you know?

-Mmm.

Not so much I think, anyway.

-No.

-But, er...

-But nothing stays the same.

-Oh, no. No.

-Things are always moving on, moving forward and changing.

But we don't like too much change, do we?

If you live in an area...

-I don't, I don't!

-No! Well, I don't myself.

But change was coming

and it was the war that was to have a huge impact on British suburbs,

particularly in cities like Liverpool, Hull, Bristol and London,

as millions of kids were evacuated because of the Blitz.

-ARCHIVE:

-Children leaving the great cities for the safety

of the countryside, leaving parents for foster parents.

When they return, they will have grown up.

Separation but safety.

Safety but...

..separation.

In the immediate post-war era, meanwhile,

as the incoming government vowed to clear the war-ravaged slums

and rebuild Britain,

the plan was to find permanent homes for those in need.

I'd like a nice self-contained house,

with a bathroom, and scullery, and a back and front garden

where the children can play, where I know where they would be,

and it would be a godsend.

A lot of them ended up in places like this, including one little boy,

who, in 1946, moved in to be with his aunt,

before he went on to change the world.

OK, it's confession time.

This isn't any ordinary semidetached suburban house

because 251 Menlove Avenue is the house where a certain little boy

moved in when he was five years old, to live with his aunt Mimi,

and that little boy was John Lennon.

And, in the wake of the Liverpool Blitz in 1946,

that room there on the left was John's bedroom.

Now, I would love to give you a guided tour

but, unfortunately, access is closely controlled

by a certain Yoko Ono

and she doesn't want us to film inside.

No. Can't come in.

'Yes, that's right, Yoko Ono says no, no.'

Not allowed.

Maybe the reason she doesn't want us to see in is that far from being

the working-class hero he claimed to be,

our John actually lived a relatively well-off middle-class lifestyle,

hardly in keeping with the image of a rock and roll band.

And, yet, without the suburbs, the Beatles may never have happened,

because this is also where John met Paul,

at their local church fete in 1955.

Now, you can't get more suburban than that.

There's even a ghostly reminder of the place they met

in the very churchyard.

Here lies one Eleanor Rigby.

This was also my era, of course,

and back in my old street

I've arranged to meet a few of my childhood chums.

They're arriving by taxi - now, that is posh!

Oh, this is weird.

'I've known both David and Brenda for over 60 years.

'Here come the waterworks again!'

Hello.

Lovely to see you.

I don't think the grass has been cut since we moved out.

-In our house.

-How do you feel, Bren, when you look at your house?

It still upsets me

cos I remember the day when we gave it up and I had...

-I was the one who had to come and give the keys up to the landlord.

-When your mum moved out?

-Did you?

When my mum moved into the home.

Anne couldn't do it, she was too upset, so they made...

Gave the keys over, came outside,

sat in the car and cried my eyes out.

Jeff and Roger, they had a cable, they strung a cable across the road.

I know why they did that.

Midnight messages.

At the time I was in love with Roger Thompson.

And they did. And Roger and I used to send messages across from his

-window to mine.

-What, little love notes?

-Yeah.

-HE LAUGHS

-Yeah.

I don't know if you remember but you were my first date.

I don't know if I was your first date but you were certainly

-my first date.

-Oh, probably.

-Yeah.

A little film at the Abbey Theatre in Wavertree.

-A real date?

-Expresso Bongo with Cliff Richard.

-Oh.

-Pre-Beatles.

-Well, I chose well, I think.

-Yeah.

-The film I'm talking about, not you!

-Oh!

Like me, Brenda and David moved out of the area a while back.

So we've relocated to the local pub,

to talk about our memories over a classic suburban G&T.

I found this and I just thought you might like to have a look at it.

It's our family but it shows the houses in Sherwyn.

Anne, Geoffrey, Shirley, Brenda, John.

I mean, the houses, they were all very much the same, weren't they,

you know? They were all painted the same.

-Yeah.

-Everything about them was uniform.

If suburbia was partly responsible for the Beatles getting together,

it was also the driving force behind another cultural revolution -

television.

In the early 1950s,

it was the must-have home accessory for every aspiring

suburban living room, as the number of TV licences

shot up from under one million to nearly four times that.

And it was one event that fuelled the demand more than most.

-ARCHIVE:

-On the 2nd of June 1953,

London saw the crowning of Queen Elizabeth II.

We got our television for the coronation, I remember,

because I remember Fred Hart and Audrey came in our house to watch

-the coronation.

-Yeah.

-As if it wasn't crowded enough!

-Yeah.

-And it was only a little, what was it, about 12 inch or something,

-the first televisions?

-Had to close the curtains.

-Yeah, you had to close the curtains.

Well, we got our television for the coronation.

I remember, there were so many people in the front room watching,

all packed round.

And there was people,

I remember, when the Queen appeared in her golden carriage,

which was so exciting,

there was people with cameras trying to take pictures of the television,

so they'd have a picture of the Queen!

-THEY SIGH

-Yeah...

-I've got this

that I thought you might like to see,

bring back a few more memories.

-See if you can find yourself on there.

-Oh, the coronation!

What a happy day that was.

Oh, there I am.

There. The photographer, I can remember it,

he kept saying, "Say cheese, come on, let's all shout cheese".

-Yeah.

-I was like this... I went, "Cheese!"

That's the exact expression.

It is.

Of course, I also have these early TV memories to thank for sparking

the acting bug that eventually led me to becoming an actress -

not that we were in watching the goggle-box all the time.

My memory of childhood is sunny days...

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-..and being outside all the time,

either on the rec or playing in the street or in the garden.

-That's right.

-I can remember my mum standing

shouting me and me hiding behind a wall because I didn't want to go in.

-That's right.

-Pretending you weren't there.

-Yeah, yeah, yeah.

-Used to go and hide, that's right.

We didn't think of it at the time, but it was a very special little

-place, wasn't it?

-Yeah, it was lovely.

-Very safe childhood.

Yeah. Very, very, very fond...

Come on, let's raise a glass.

-Fond memories.

-Fond memories.

-To Sherwyn Road. BOTH:

-To Sherwyn Road!

-And all who sailed in her.

-And all who... Yeah.

But it wasn't just in our little corner of Liverpool

that things were idyllic.

These were exciting times,

when Britain's suburbs were being rebuilt

for a new generation of baby boomers.

I think the Prime Minister summed it up when he said,

"You've never had it so good."

And, in suburbia, we had never wanted our houses to look so good,

inside and out,

from having the perfect garden, to our increased obsession with DIY.

I'm not even going to look as though I'm doing this whole job

because I get into quite enough trouble,

wives telling their husbands that I did the job in ten minutes,

why don't they get cracking! So I'm keeping off that one.

Yes, we wanted to create the ideal home

and we knew exactly where to find it.

-ARCHIVE:

-Last week at Olympia in London, the Ideal Home Exhibition

opened its doors to crowds of visitors.

The Ideal Home Exhibition actually began in 1908,

the same year as they began building the Liver Building.

But it was the rise of the newly-affluent,

suburban middle class that really cemented its popularity,

clocking up a record attendance of 1.5 million visitors.

The Queen herself has visited 11 times

and, over the years, she would've seen

up-to-the-minute interior design,

the first fitted kitchens, and the latest in home technology.

-ARCHIVE:

-Views inside one of the houses on show

reveal a number of novel features.

For example, this built-in aquarium,

and, come cocktail time, it's easy to fix a drink in this ideal home...

Not that this homeware revolution came cheap.

Washing machines in 1969 were over £1,000 in today's money,

and a TV cost more than a month's wages.

By the 1970s, there was even more temptation about.

-ARCHIVE:

-Emphasis is on ease of operation everywhere,

you can even open the curtains in the dawn's early light

without getting out of bed.

And, so, suburban homes were offered a revolution in how to buy

their household goods,

when home catalogues started arriving through the door.

As with rock and roll,

Liverpool was leading the way with the hometown company, Littlewoods.

Now these are the catalogues.

'I've come to meet David Heathcote

'at the Liverpool School of Art and Design,

'to find out more about Liverpool's impact on the homeware revolution.'

I remember my grandparents had the same furniture for years

and years and years,

and, then, suddenly, in the sort of '60s and '70s,

everyone wanted, "Oh, no, we want this now and that now."

So the choice was there.

And, of course, things like this kitchen, this green kitchen, right?

That was what hire purchase was about, really,

to allow people to buy new things more often than

they would have done before.

Well, it just suddenly made the world accessible.

And I like this idea that you can have a mattress

that you'll never see, except when you change the bed,

that's got a trendy pattern all over it...

-A really jazzy...

-Just so you know you're in a modern house.

-ARCHIVE:

-Hire purchase is one of the greatest assets of the modern

community. It enables us to fill our homes with beautiful things

we could never otherwise afford.

It raises our standard of living.

As people got used to the idea of hire purchase,

they became more consumerist, they would think,

"Oh, yeah, I can get rid of that now, I can have another one."

But I think there is something immoral,

certainly to my grandmother, you know, why get something new,

-when you've got something already?

-Yeah, yeah.

This was an era when keeping up with the Joneses

became a national pastime.

As neighbours in suburbia used their homes to show

just how well-to-do they were, no matter how ludicrous.

-ARCHIVE:

-When you're feeling sleepy, you simply pull a bed from nowhere.

All aimed at saving space where space is at a premium.

For the serious drinker, how about a bar with a built-in bed?

From the high street, homeware stores popped up to meet the demand

of those with a real taste for social climbing.

Very much in the spirit of Abigail's Party, we've got a fondue party.

Ah, the fondue party, yes!

I mean, you know, Habitat spotted there was a gap for young people who

wanted to buy furniture like clothing.

I mean, it was a brilliant idea.

Habitat whitewood furniture, the whole idea of that,

as it shows you there,

you're supposed to paint it a psychedelic colour yourself.

Whereas at least in the Littlewoods one,

it comes with a pattern on it already.

-I like that, though.

-Yeah, I think this said freedom.

You know, that it's somehow my decision, I'm being me,

I'm being individual.

MUSIC: The Good Life theme tune

By the 1970s, middle-class suburbia

was very much considered the mainstream way of life in Britain.

And this started to be reflected back in the comedy of the day,

which began to poke fun at the obsessions and pre-occupations

of those who lived in cul-de-sacs and avenues.

From Butterflies...

-Morning.

-I was deliberately not reading my newspaper,

because I consider it to be bad manners

to eat and read.

To The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Perrin, starring Liverpool's

very own son, Leonard Rossiter.

Morning Peter!

And, of course, the daddy of all suburban sitcoms, The Good Life.

All these characters lived in a certain type of street,

one we came to know as Acacia Avenue.

So, why is suburbia so funny?

Local stand-up and fellow suburbanite, Sam Avery,

has a theory, so I'm meeting him in a real life Acacia Avenue

here in Liverpool.

So, I should really be on that side of the pavement, shouldn't I...

-Yeah, you should, actually.

-..as a chivalrous male.

-Yeah.

-Let's get you on that side.

-Yeah.

-That's better, isn't it?

So, why is it that suburbia is always such a funny subject?

I think suburbia is certainly one part of the social mobility

that became very popular in the '60s and '70s and

certainly when you look at British sitcoms,

where it shows characters out of their depth, maybe,

or it shows characters who have got a very distinct aim,

and sometimes that aim is to appear slightly classier than they perhaps are.

I think it's the real thing this time, you can tell in her voice.

I shall have to take her in hand,

the benefit of my experience,

could considerably aid her social advancement.

Their perception of themselves is here,

and the world they live in

is down here, and that's where the comedy lives,

in that gap between the two.

This is our downstairs, toilet. OK?

I really get what Sam is saying.

This gap between perception of one's social status and the reality was

certainly at the core of playing Beverly in Abigail's Party.

But, for me, it was always done with affection,

showing that we in suburbia are able to laugh at ourselves.

Oh, fantastic, it's Beaujolais. Lovely.

Now, you'll remember at the start, that I wanted to show you

how suburbia wasn't all about the cliches?

Well, now it's time to prove it.

Sam and I are about to conduct a little door-to-door survey,

to see how many of the stereotypes this Acacia Avenue conforms to.

Do they wash their cars every Sunday?

Are they impossibly house proud?

Do they own gnomes?

We're about to find out.

We've even got our own clipboards.

Question number one, how often do you mow your lawn?

Not often enough.

-Never.

-Never.

-Have you got a lawn?

-Yes.

-Never.

-Never?

-I've got an artificial lawn.

Oh, you've got an artificial lawn, ah, great.

Do you own a garden gnome?

-No.

-I can tell by your face, that, actually,

you have owned one in the past.

Yeah, I did have a gnome, yeah, then somebody smashed the head off it.

Oh, no! Un-gnome people!

# And there was a little, old man

# In scarlet and grey... #

I'd love to know the statistics about garden gnomes and whether they

-still sell as well as they did 20 years ago.

-Mmm.

If I was to enter your house now,

would you insist on a shoes off policy?

It's optional.

It's an unwritten rule.

OK. I was wondering if you leave loads of shoes lying about,

people go, keep them on?

-Yeah.

-You could have smelly feet?

I could have smelly feet, I do have smelly feet.

Do you insist on coasters for drinks?

-No.

-Yeah.

Yeah. You've got to have coasters, you've got your coffee table,

you don't want that damaging, do you?

Do you usually open the door to people doing surveys?

-Yeah.

-You do?

-And I try to be polite.

Well, that was a bit of fun.

And I think after crunching the data, it's fair to say

that Acacia Avenue, Liverpool,

manages to pass the cliche test...just.

Everyone except one person was happy to do surveys.

-Everyone?

-Yes!

But if the 1970s were all about suburbia laughing at itself,

in the 1980s, we were about to see them taken very seriously indeed

as one woman climbed to power.

-ARCHIVE:

-As leader of the opposition,

Margaret Thatcher leads a busy political life

but she keeps her finger on the domestic pulse.

She calls herself a career housewife.

As a grocer's daughter and, yes, self-confessed housewife,

Mrs Thatcher wanted to appeal

to the quiet majority living in the suburbs,

even going so far as canvassing support in places

like the Ideal Home Exhibition.

-ARCHIVE:

-Conservative leader, Mrs Margaret Thatcher,

meets a young couple and their children who have bought the 5,000th

Victorian house to be converted into a modern dwelling.

When she was elected, it's fair to say,

she wanted to expand the suburban dream for all,

bringing in policies such as the right-to-buy scheme,

so council house tenants could own their own home.

The design of houses, meanwhile,

reflected this supremacy as the mock Tudor style came into fashion.

This was an age when the Englishman's home

really was his castle, as this documentary from 1984 shows.

I've always had the feeling that this house

is the safe place I return to.

I can, if I want, lift up the drawbridge

and I can cut the rest of the world out.

Yes, in the '80s,

Britain's middle-classes really did have something to sing about.

# ..dwelt a miner forty niner

# And his daughter Clementine. #

And yet there was another side to this decade,

one that takes us back to the place where I started my journey.

The old Georgian and Victorian suburbs.

Here, a more diverse working class community now lived

and Mrs Thatcher's housing revolution

left many feeling left behind.

This was especially true in Liverpool

and the area I'm off to now.

MUSIC: Two Tribes by Frankie Goes to Hollywood

The old suburb of Toxteth, where, in 1981, riots broke out.

# When two tribes go to war

# A point is all you can score...#

-ARCHIVE:

-One of the worst and most terrifying nights of rioting

ever seen in Britain began just after 9 o'clock.

Youths hijacked several milk floats

and drove them straight at the police lines as they began

to form with their riot shields at the end of Upper Parliament Street,

the scene of the previous night's running battles.

In essence, those who now lived in the old suburbs,

which had become rundown and neglected,

were pitting themselves against the politics of the new middle-class,

living in Mr Thatcher's version of suburbia.

What do you think of what's happened in this street last night?

What do I think? I think the war's started again.

A declaration of war. It's a war.

Yes, the suburbs were at war.

But what was it like to live here at that time?

-Hi, Derek.

-Hi, Alison, how are you? Nice to see you.

'I've come to meet a famous Liverpool face who,

'Derek Hatton, who remembers it well,

'and Mike Boyle, who grew up in the area.'

So, Derek, you were a councillor at the time?

What was it like for you when it happened?

I don't think any of us were really surprised that something was happening.

I think we all knew that there was a bit of a build-up.

Almost like a tinder box.

Then, when it happened here,

I don't think we quite expected it to be at the level that it was.

-No.

-You know, you looked around and each way you looked there was

blazes, there was things on fire,

there was police cars, sirens, around.

-ARCHIVE:

-The rioters, black and white,

reigned a constant barrage of stones,

bottles and petrol bombs at the police,

whose casualties mounted every time they charged.

It upset me, the average Scouser, whether you were black or white.

Your city was in turmoil.

For the white young men on the streets rioting,

it was that feeling of helplessness,

because they couldn't get jobs either.

That's what lit the touch paper here.

-ARCHIVE:

-Reinforcements arrived from Greater Manchester,

Lancashire and Cheshire but time and again they were forced to retreat.

The police were ill-equipped to deal with this.

I mean, it wasn't riot gear by any stretch of the imagination.

No. No.

-ARCHIVE:

-One constable's helmet was later recovered

with a spiked railing firmly embedded in it.

The situation was so dangerous that the Fire Brigade had to stay clear.

Famous landmarks, like the former Rialto dance hall,

were simply burnt to the ground.

That's the Rialto, you know.

They were very selective in terms of where was burnt down.

-They were making a point.

-That's right.

-It wasn't just riots.

-No. It was business, wasn't it?

It was, I mean, they saw...it was a class thing.

-Yes.

-They thought the likes of Rialto, The Racket Club,

-the gentlemen's club up the road.

-Oh, yes, that's right. Very elitist.

They were burnt to the ground, but anything like a local shop

that was owned by their own people, no way that was burnt down.

That was never touched, no.

Do you think housing was a big issue?

That was one of the main issues that pushed that riot?

Yeah, because the nature of the property that the people lived in

dated back to the Victorian times,

even the small, six-roomed terraced houses.

-I went to school in the '60s, down here in town.

-Right.

In the '60s, you'd come down on the bus and all those houses were

-derelict.

-Yes.

-They were derelict for 20-odd, 30 years.

-So that must have had a big influence on...

-It did.

That again adds to that frustration and feeling of hopelessness,

and generation upon generation experienced this.

It culminates and bubbles over in '81, by the fact that

that particular generation said

"We're not prepared to put it up with this any more."

And the irony is after the Toxteth riots of course things did happen.

Houses did get built, job situation was changed, education did change,

things did happen, so that's why, after that, then it calmed down.

But it only calmed down because things were done.

Today, Toxteth is improving with new housing and investment in the area.

It's still a wonderfully multicultural community

and, although it's heartbreaking to see many streets still lying empty,

other streets have improved beyond all recognition.

Mike wants to show me one of its major suburban success stories.

It's a beautiful street.

This is Beaconsfield Street in the heart of Toxteth.

It's a street which recently has been, as you can see,

-the houses have been renovated.

-Yeah.

-In fact, this area,

this particular street and the street next to it

won the Turner Prize last year for, I think it was urban regeneration.

Really? I just love it when houses like this are brought back to life

and restored, instead of knocking them down, building flats.

-Absolutely, yes.

-Restore the beautiful Victorian houses.

That's right.

Hopefully, those dark days of the '80s are now behind us

and certainly over the last 20 or so years in Liverpool,

there's a real feeling of rejuvenation

and building right across the city,

not just in the suburbs.

But, of course, many Liverpudlians are still craving suburbia,

and I can't finish my journey without taking a peek

at what the latest suburban enclaves look like.

So, I've come to Crosby, a slice of suburbia popular with commuters

since the opening of the Crosby and Southport railway in 1848.

I haven't seen any garden gnomes.

Garden gnomes are not popular?

Well, I think the garden gnome trend is on the decline

at the moment, I believe. Yes. Yeah.

Taking me on my tour is local estate agent, Alex Bibby.

Right, we're off to a brand-new development

on a road called Victoria Road, in a gated complex

which is a desirable option for a lot of buyers these days.

So, explain to me what "gated" actually means?

It doesn't sound very nice to me!

Essentially, it's a collection of houses behind double gates,

so that you have a little more privacy and seclusion.

'There are currently over 1,000 gated communities across the UK

'and that number is growing every year.'

Alison, do come in.

Oh! Wow!

Oh! Yeah.

Very nice.

'When it's finished, this development will be made up

'of eight, four-bedroom detached houses,

'all done to a high spec.'

-That, I like.

-You'd never want to leave the house, would you?

Well...

'I wonder what Beverly from Abigail's Party,

'or Pam from Gavin & Stacey would have made of these places?

'They're absolutely enormous.'

Here we are, Alison. Come on into the fantastic kitchen,

family, entertaining room.

Well...

'But never mind them, what would my mum say?'

If my mother could walk in here now and see this amount of space,

you probably could, well,

our whole house would have fitted into this ground floor, you know.

'So I suppose the big question is

'just what does it take to buy this sort of suburban dream today?'

It's so chi-chi.

How much would it cost?

Yes, well, the properties on this development are starting

at around about £900,000, upwards.

-Starting?

-Yes. Yes.

Right, OK.

I mean, London prices, that's not much,

but for prices in the north of England, that's a lot.

'Like all good salesmen,

'Alex has left me alone to take in the price and make myself at home.'

Two fridges, two freezers, and...

..a wine cooler.

'Unlike Beverly's house, there's no Beaujolais in this fridge.'

Ah, champagne!

'Could I imagine living somewhere like this?'

It's a very, very different feel from the suburbia that I knew,

and, indeed, no, the suburbia I know's a bit more cosy,

a bit more, sort of, pots and pans...

Yeah.

Suburbia's certainly moved on.

It's almost the end of my journey,

so what home truths have I learned about Britain's suburbia?

Well, I hope I've convinced you that they're not just the cliche we often

think they are. To me they have a quiet charm and dignity to them,

and that's embodied in the people who live here.

But they've also been at the centre of our nation's story,

changing the way we've lived,

producing some extraordinary people in the process,

and never being afraid to laugh at themselves along the way.

So, have I convinced you that the suburbs are superb?

I hope so.

Now it's time to celebrate my home truth back in Anfield

with my dear old friends, David and Brenda.

Just to finish off, I thought we'd have a little celebration, so...

..I've brought you a little, um...

-a little nibble...

-Oh.

Oh, my goodness.

-Abigail!

-Yes, it brings back memories, doesn't it?

I know none of us ever had garden gnomes but the cliche is that

-suburbia...

-Oh, my goodness me!

..has garden gnomes, so you've got to pick...

This is called Pick Your Gnome.

-Oh, my goodness.

-Choose our gnome, cos there's one each.

OK?

-Pick your gnome!

-Well, no, ladies first, obviously.

I'm going to have to go with this chappie,

because he's got a red jacket on and I'm Liverpudlian,

through and through and through.

-OK, David?

-No. No. Ladies first.

OK, I'll go for the watering can, this chap.

OK, and I'll have...

There's no place like gnome!

# Let's take a ride

# And run with the dogs tonight

# In suburbia

# You can't hide

# Run with the dogs tonight

# In suburbia

# Break a window

# By the town hall

# Listen, the siren screams

# There in the distance... #