The Gazette reported how an army medic married a police typist he met while he was based in Hackney during a five-month ambulance strike, this week 30 years ago.

Kevin Dark, 22, a private in the Royal Army Medical Corps, met Elizabeth Curtin, 21, in Hackney Police Station’s crowded canteen.

Elizabeth, of Brougham Road, London Fields, described how it was “love at first sight” for her.

“I’d said hello to him once or twice as we passed each other on the stairs, but I was too shy to talk to him,” she said.

“So I asked the canteen cook to find out for me if he was single and unattached.

“One day I was with a crowd of policemen when Kevin passed by, and out of sheer devilment one of them shouted: ‘Oh God. Liz has gone weak at the knees!’

“I nearly died with embarrassment, but I think he twigged I was keen on him and after the canteen cook had played Cupid by saying I was interested, he rang me up and asked me out to the pictures. The rest is history.”

They wed at Hackney Registry Office after a whirlwind romance.