FOR one East Lancashire student a trip to the seaside at Blackpool was anything but fun and games.

Seventeen-year-old Philip Lonsdale was mugged of £5.30 by four youths at the resort's North Shore, according to the Lancashire Evening Telegraph of November 2, 1979.

The second-year student at Fleetwood Nautical College, from Baxenden, had been walking back to his digs when he was thrown into the sea by the quartet.

But then there was little cheer for most, as the decade slowly drew to a close.

Chief Supt Gerald Billingham, of Blackburn Police, had been forced to issue a warning to youngsters after a Halloween tragedy had turned a 13-year-old boy into a human torch.

The youngster had been left engulfed in flames after six teenagers had attempted to fashion their own petrol bomb in Bastwell.

Mr Billingham warned that the practice could prove fatal, as the boy faced further hospital treatment.

In court, a Darwen teenager, Stephen Duffy, who had attacked his own grandmother with a bottle, was jailed for two years.

Elsewhere a chemicals leaks had devastated fish and plant life in brooks in Brinscall, after a fire at a timber yard. Elsewhere Blackburn's bus drivers were sriking - but a deal was said to be close.