Bracknell’s second Sainsbury’s store was opened in 1991, located on the Bagshot Road, and customers were being promised that the Princess Square shop would continue to operate alongside the new superstore.

The new store manager, Alasdair Currie, had come from a similar position in Weston-Super-Mare and he had joined 368 new staff, created by the opening.

With more space around the Bagshot Road shop there would be 600 car parking spaces, a petrol station and a coffee shop.

It was a happy ending for Jack the dog and his owner Thomas Locke when his four-legged friend went missing from his home in Easthampstead.

Despite a frantic search for the dog, who had opened the family’s garden gate, he went ‘walkabout’ for four days.

Jack caused a bit of commotion when he was spotted stuck behind a railway track beside the A329 “Twin Bridges Roundabout”- barking to attract attention.

Police then spent an hour-and-a-half trying to catch him and on his return his owner Jack told the News:” We were concerned that he would get killed on the track, we had everybody out looking for him and wondered what he had been eating and drinking all that time!”

Lucky competition winner Allen Tyrrell won an upwardly mobile prize in 1991 - but had to wait a week for his chance to ride in a helicopter.

After winning his prize, a week of low cloud and fog meant his ride from Booker Airfield near Marlow, had to be postponed time and again.

But eventually he arrived at a garden centre in Binfield with a very special passenger, Father Christmas, who met the excited crowd below and then flew on (without Rudolph and his reindeer friends) to another store near Reading.

Three charity workers from Lynwood, Sunninghill, completed a 10-hour car journey to deliver some bottles of Beaujolais wine and raised £10,000 into the bargain.

Tina Steele, Tim Lambert and Geoffrey Atkinson had to use some ingenuity to raise even more funds by raffling two teddy bears, which brought in another £600.

Mr Lambert told the News:” The general opinion in France seemed to be that this year’s Beaujolais Nouveau is a good one, having now sampled it I’m sure the Lynwood residents would agree!”

The spotlight fell on Wokingham Theatre group in the News column “Curtain Call” 28 years ago, just as they were rehearsing their Christmas production of “Gaslight and Garters”.

Member Steven Long, a member for the previous ten years, told the column: “We like to stage all different types of things, but because we are self-funding, we have to make sure we sell plenty of tickets.”

Eight-year-old Katherine Boddy was crowned “Snow Princess” at Bracknell’s Christmas lights switch on in 1991, dozens of colourful clowns and circus-style performers joined her in the town’s Princess Square.