When some 50 ladies of Liverpool hired a coach to London to witness the wedding of Diana and Charles on June 29 1981, they had a couple of brandies each before setting off, “to settle our nerves”. There were mothers, daughters, sisters and best friends: Sandra Astles’ mother is shown in the home movie they shot singing about a mother-in-law, while Sandra giggles proudly in the background. Remembering it in middle-aged tranquillity for Those Were the Days (ITV3, Wednesday), Sandra and her friend Beryl Brown spoke of a day on which, as the latter put it, “our future king was finally getting married” – a ritual for a necessary completion of a circle.

That circle is broken. The programme reminded us that “Tainted Love”, by Soft Cell, was a runaway hit that year. Love – “whatever that means”, as Prince Charles fatuously, famously and fatally said during a pre-marriage interview – was tainted all right, as was the future of a society in which a young woman from Liverpool could unselfconsciously speak of the need for the British royal line to continue. Now, there is a pervasive sense that new generations are growing whose gorging on starch, heavy drinking and indiscriminate sex are ruining them: a report this week revealed that the health of women under 50 may be worsening, because of “lifestyle”.