7 Female TV stars that shaped our lives

She was ‘a tramp and a drunk and an unfit mother’ but the only thing we really blamed her for was marrying evil JR Ewing in the first place. The original Desperate Housewife, ‘Swellen’ was a neurotic alcoholic mess in giant shoulder pads and we lapped up every torrid twist of her tragic storyline. And in the end she found the strength to leave JR and set up her own business. And how we cheered! 

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10 things you'll remember if you went to school in the 80s
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Calm in a crisis, stylish in black eyeliner and a tight-fitting red tunic, Uhura averted many a crisis by frowning slightly as she touched her earpiece and gazing into the middle distance. It’s a trick we can all pull off in a traffic jam to great effect. 

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10 things you'll remember if you went to school in the 80s
10 things you'll get if you were a child in the 70s

The ditzy but good-natured Marion Cunningham may not have appeared like the brains in her marriage, but she was firmly in control. Protective of her tight-knit family, she was a second mum to the renegade Arthur ‘Fonzie’ Fonzarelli, and everyone secretly wished they had a Mom like Mrs C. 

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10 things you'll remember if you went to school in the 80s
10 things you'll get if you were a child in the 70s

A fearsome matriarch with more than a plateful of woes to contend with, Sheila was nobody’s fool. A troubled marriage, the death of her son, redundancy, rape – her storylines were never fun but we rooted for her every step of the way, especially when she got a second chance at happiness with Billy Corkhill.

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10 things you'll remember if you went to school in the 80s
10 things you'll get if you were a child in the 70s

Tough acting Major Margaret J ‘Hotlips’ Houlihan was a feisty firebrand who gave the boys at MASH 4077 unit as good as she got. With a knack for winning bets, she was a crazy party girl one minute, and sobbing over the tatters of her love life the next. Most of all she started a craze for wearing army fatigues.

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10 things you'll remember if you went to school in the 80s
10 things you'll get if you were a child in the 70s

We all knew women were funny, but Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders were the first to be headline-hoggingly, award-winningly hilarious, without having to play second fiddle to a male lead. Whether spoofing Abba or Titanic, or mimicking teenage girls and pervy old men, they were daring and silly and refreshingly rude. 

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10 things you'll remember if you went to school in the 80s
10 things you'll get if you were a child in the 70s

Strong, ambitious and sexy, LA Law’s assistant district attorney Grace Van Owen made a career in the legal profession look very appealing. Who wouldn’t want to swan around courtrooms wearing soft silk blouses and business suits, clutching sheaves of notes and looking fiercely intelligent?

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10 things you'll remember if you went to school in the 80s
10 things you'll get if you were a child in the 70s