That was the other direction in 1991.
£1.00 is the equivalent of €3.31 / $3.55 - Still pretty damn expensive for 1 min. It didn't plummet until a quite a few years later.
They were all very tugging at the heart strings kind of ads.
Telecom was a still monopoly in those days, so lots of very nostalgically warm and fuzzy adverts. They didn't have to try very hard! The first one is featuring a Telecom Éireann branded GNT Automatic phone designed by Henning Andreasen in Denmark in the late 70s. They were one of the standard rental handsets from Telecom in the 80s - came in a range of colours, along side things like the Northern Telecom Harmony phones.
I still have one of these working flawlessly on modern VoIP, and it probably dates from about 1985.
The "R" button is the register recall for call waiting and 3-way calling.
Works a little differently here (and similarly in much of Europe).
R1 - Answer incoming waiting call, and release current call.
R2 - Answer incoming waiting call, and hold current call or toggle between calls.
R3 - Merge calls and setup a 3-way conversation.
R0 - Reject incoming call waiting (send to voicemail after that arrived in the 90s)
To make a 3 way call you called the first person, pressed R, called the second person and pressed R3 to merge. You could split the calls again and toggle with R2
Unlike a US hook flash, the R button sent a short pulse, similar to pulse dialling 1.
