Dear Editor,

All my grandparents lived in Andover when I was little, where as, we lived in Hatherden which of course is within a few miles. So I knew and loved Andover, especially the park (with the aviary) and the town centre.

I am now looking for any photos of events that were held in Andover in the 80s? If I need to narrow it down even further, the shop I always looked forward to popping into when I was small was the amazing toyshop - Top Toys.

Does anyone remember it? For the life of me, I cannot find any photos of the front displays (including the shop sign) or inside.0517

The event I’m actually most interested was, and excuse my nerdiness, was when Darth Vader came to visit Top Toys.

I was too young to know about upcoming events back then, it’s just I was visiting my grandparents and I just popped down into the town centre and low and behold there was a massive queue and lots of police because he was visiting the shop!

Whether or not it was actually David Prowse, remains a mystery.

But I did wait in line and I did eventually get to see him, shake his intergalactic hand and was then given information on how to join the Official Star Wars Club. Which I couldn’t do fast enough!

I was wondering if anyone had any information, pictures or snippets from local magazines about this visit by the Dark Lord, in the 80s and in our beloved Andover?

Someone suggested I contact Andover Advertiser as being a very popular paper, you might have printed something about the event. Obviously I’m not requesting a needle in a haystack search but if it’s easy and possible I wondered if you had a scan of a possible article about it or even better pictures, or just as good old 80s pictures of Top Toys the store.

Another event that came to mind was a big cinema that actually played a triple bill of the Star Wars films when Return of the Jedi was released. We at the time had not seen ROTJedi until that day, but amazingly we watched the first two films before-hand then the that. It was amazing. Especially for young lads like ourselves. Also wondered if there’d been a story about that too as not sure if there were many triple bills for kids much back then in the 80s.

If you could find something I’d greatly appreciate it.

Nev Cummins,

Redhill,

Surrey