The Channel Islands This Week Nik Rawlinson

Drastic action had to be taken when an oil slick several miles long threatened the Channel Islands' beaches. Soldiers staged a mutiny at Guernsey's Fort George, and, in Jersey, the body of a missing banker was found at t he back of a cave. Two murder cases came to the courts, each with a sensational outcome, and a coup leader was released from Elizabeth Castle when his wife successfully won him his freedom.

It was the week in which the Channel Islands' food and fuel supplies were running so dangerously low that the occupying forces had no choice but to mount a raid on mainland France, Jersey's deputies voted to build Corbiere lighthouse and, in Guernsey, work began on constructing the current airport.

Victor Hugo published Toilers of the Sea, his work of fiction set in an dedicated to Guernsey, and Terence Alexander, who would go on to play Charlie Hungerford in Bergerac, was born.

It was also the week when emergency services from Guernsey, Jersey, and even France, teamed up for an ambitious exercise in preparation for a maritime disaster.

Guernsey's entire police force is arrested, Sark is the star of a Channel 4 drama, and Jersey is brought to a standstill by a hoax bomb threat. The first episode of Puffin's Pla(i)ce is broadcast across the Channel Islands, Guernsey Airport hires a dead man as its new boss, and, when a man slips and falls on the steps to Jersey's Fort Regent, it's only after he dies that the mystery of who he really is emerges.

A gruesome Scottish murder results in a Channel Islands suicide, two Jersey locals face questions over their conduct during the occupation, and Guernsey stars in a BBC comedy pilot. Plans for Guernsey's power station at St Sampson get the thumbs up, and the tunnel under St Helier's Fort Regent finally opens to traffic. Guernsey's first banker dies, and two women find themselves stranded on Jersey's Seymour Tower.

The Channel Islands are cut off from the outside world when the cable connecting them to the mainland snaps, Aurigny is founded, and the Guernsey Railway runs its last services. Meanwhile, Charles II is declared king in St Helier while still on the run from England, and Jersey's courts were criticised by the Home Office for leaving a man in limbo. St Sampson, Guernsey's patron saint, was ordained a bishop, and the recently deceased Lillie Langtry was brought back to Jersey to lie in her parents' tomb.

Guernsey's last execution doesn't go according to plan, despite being conducted in front of 200 ticket-holding spectators. In Jersey, senators vote to flood Queen's Valley to create a new reservoir, and four housewives are jailed for smuggling currency off the island in their underwear.

Alderney's first full-time radio station goes on air after years of short-term broadcasts, and a new name appears on Channel Island departure board as Blue Islands takes to the skies.