I don’t know if Citizens’ Band Radio still exists these days – I suspect the invention of the mobile phone has rather rendered it obsolete – but back in the late 1970s and 1980s, it was all the rage.

It began, as everything seems to, in the United States, soon after the end of the Second World War and in the following decades gained popularity across the world. Hands up all those who remember Tony Hancock’s hilarious The Radio Ham episode from 1961?

In those days, radio set-ups like Hancock’s were relatively rare and based at home, but the craze took off in America, during the oil crisis of the 70s, when speed limits were strictly enforced and fuel became scarce.

CB radio was then often vehicle-based and truckers, in particular, would contact each other to reveal where they had seen speed traps (these are the days before speed cameras, of course) or, indeed which “gas stations” might have supplies of fuel.

In the mid 1970s, CW McCall had a big hit both in the US and in this country with the song Convoy, full of the CB jargon of the day, which spawned a film of the same name, and the fad just took off.

Watford was no more exempt from this than anywhere else, and in 1983, actress Pauline Collins no less (a familiar face through her role in the hugely popular Upstairs Downstairs, the Downton Abbey of its day) was called upon to launch a three-day CB marathon held by Watford Breakers, ‘breaker’ being a CB term used to attract people’s attention to a forthcoming message.

The Watford Observer ran the following artcle in its edition of February 11, 1983, to mark the event.

“Actress Pauline Collins tried a Citizens’ Band radio for the first time on Friday night when she launched a Watford breakers three-day marathon. And afterwards Pauline, currently starring in Romantic Comedy at Watford Palace Theatre, said: ‘This is terrific. I might even take this up.’

“The former Upstairs Downstairs star lent her charm to the opening broadcasts from the top of Watford’s tallest building, the YMCA in Charter Place.

“The breakers were aiming to contact as many CB users as possible and all money from sponsorship and donations is to be shared by the YMCA and a charitable fund which provides CB equipment for housebound and handicapped people.

“Pauline soon got used to calling local breakers by their CB ‘handles’.

“Said Pauline: ‘Hello Poison Ivy. That’s my mother-in-law’s name – but she’s not poisonous.’

“Among the CB enthusiasts were Watford Council’s chief executive Mr Bruce McMillan and the vicar of St Andrews, the Rev Norman Moore.

“Here, Pauline is seen entering into the fun of CB on the lap of civic chief Mr McMillan.

“From 6pm on Friday until 10pm on Sunday a total of 4,070 breakers were contacted from the ‘Crow's Nest’ headquarters at the YMCA.

“Breakers reached included people in Scotland and the North. And organisers are now waiting for promised donations to roll in.

“Mr McMillan said: ‘We are hoping to raise more than £1,000 from the effort. But are waiting for the contributions to come in.’

“On Saturday, the breakers manned a ‘CB surgery’ on the ground floor of the YMCA so that information could be supplied to passing members of the public.”

That was all 32 years ago, however, and while it seems truckers still use it, for much the same reasons as previously, its popularity at home has all but ended.

The language was always fun, though, and often sets it firmly in its time. A police officer on a motorcycle was known as an Evel Knievel, after the celebrated stunt rider who attempted more than 75 ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps between 1965 and 1980, including, in 1974, a failed jump across Snake River Canyon in a steam-powered rocket.

Knievel suffered more than 433 bone fractures in his career, thereby earning an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records as the survivor of “most bones broken in a lifetime”.

Going back to CB language, according to one source I checked, a Volkswagen Beetle was referred to as a “pregnant rollerskate”. That’s a 10-4, good buddy (as I believe they used to say). C’mon?