FROM THE DAILY MAIL ARCHIVE

JANUARY 23, 1963

MRS Nora Bevins, wife of the POSTMASTERGENERAL, picked a cream telephone to match the decor of their home — and her husband wants to know why it cost 30 shillings [£29.50 in today’s money] more than a plain black one. A Post Office spokesman said: ‘You pay £3 for a coloured phone. Thirty shillings of it is the cost of a visit to change the instrument; the other 30s is just for being different. If it was abolished, some housewives might change their phone every time they altered a colour scheme.’

JANUARY 23, 1967

HOMES in the year 2000 may move about on their own and plug in at intervals on a parent ‘tree’ for refuelling and other services, says designer Sir Hugh Casson, who has produced a model of his ‘capsule house’. It will be seen as one of the features at the Daily Mail Ideal Home Exhibition.