When Channel 4 started, the first thing to hit design junkies was that the station ident – those primary-coloured blocks coming together in deep space in a clever modern way – looked more than a bit Memphis. The Italian designer Ettore Sottsass’s colourful Memphis furniture was much on the mood boards, if not the shopping lists, of the early Eighties designer classes.

But more important by a mile as an influence on real BHS – British Home Style – was the happy coincidence of The World of Interiors magazine (launched 1981), the television adaptation of Brideshead Revisited (1981), the ‘fairytale’ royal wedding (1981), the Falklands victory celebration (1982) and even The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook, co-written by Anne Barr and me (1982).

Shabby Chic was faded and distressed to high heaven to avoid the shoulder-padded stigma of New Money Throwing Its Weight Around

Taken together, they helped create the mainstream interiors trend that current World of Interiors editor Rupert Thomas describes as, ‘Intensely nostalgic and backward-looking, insistently English, rather show-off, packed with antiques, loaded with knick-knacks… country-house on a budget.’ At the richer end, that meant the Country House Hotel look: yellow-walled drawing rooms with elaborate pink-on-white floral chintz curtains (‘swags and tails’), important-looking marble chimneypieces and old rugs – especially Aubussons – on neutral carpeted or wooden floors. These rooms were full of impressive-looking late 18th century furniture – real or fake – made of conker-shiny mahogany. Big bookcases had pediments; big dining tables had three pedestals. Add elaborate pairs of sofas with gimps and braids and tassels, heaped with fancy cushions in tapestry and beadwork and you Get The Look.

At an evolved, self-conscious level, the look came out as Shabby Chic, equally grandiose but everything worn, faded and distressed to high heaven to avoid the shoulder-padded stigma of New Money Throwing Its Weight Around. And at a more mainstream middle-class level, this mood simply meant Laura Ashley.