David Hywel Thomas - History's Most Eccentric History Teacher... and one of the best! 

John Geraint Roberts takes us for a busy walk along the retail wonderland that was Tonypandy's Dunraven Street in the 1970s.

John Geraint Roberts' favourite boyhood toy took him up and down the Rhondda, from Blaencwm to Porth, and Clydach Vale to Maerdy - and even further afield! He was by far and away the youngest driver on the whole Rhondda Transport network.

John Geraint Roberts's boyhood home was just yards away from one of Rhondda's most famous collieries - but the pit had been shut the year after the year he was born. All the same, his house had plenty to teach him about the true cost of the black diamond.

Can you remember your very first telephone number? We were stuck for years on a waiting list before we got a phone at home, and when we did get one, it wasn't a proper Tonypandy number we were given. Memories of phone boxes, party lines, operators and misdialled numbers... a time when telecommunication wasn't the instant, omnipresent, hi-tech amenity we take for granted today.

In 2002, every child in Welsh-medium schools in the whole Rhondda marched on top of Penrhys to take part in a special film based on a National Eisteddfod-winning poem which celebrates the long history of the Valley. Rhondda's world-famous choirs, bands, singers and actors got involved too. John Geraint Roberts explains how he was inspired to make the film.

The extraordinary social gospel preached and practised at the Methodist Central Hall, Tonypandy was an imaginative and prophetic clarion call against the inequalities of the 1920s and 1930s which pushed Rhondda people into hardship, hunger and - in thousands of cases - exile.

The Plaza and the Picturedrome, Zulu and Ben Hur, and the anxieties of a first date - the magic of the movies in mid-Rhondda. 

How many aunties did you have, when you were growing up? John Geraint Roberts started counting his, got to fifty and then recorded this episode...

Were your schooldays the happiest days of your life? John Geraint Roberts counts himself lucky to have been born in just the right place at just the right time to experience a unique moment of educational transition.