Public phones in the UK

In early 80's in small town Scotland there were rotaries; all phased out by late eighties. And they all smelled like pish.

I'm in the Midlands and I'm thinking late 70s/early 80s

I'm a regular visitor to rural parts of Scotland (Western Isles, Ullapool) and honestly wouldn't be surprised to still see a rotary phone box there. In Stornoway and across the little villages scattered over the Isle of Lewis, rotary phones were still a regular sight in houses in the 2000s.

If it's a rural part of the country, you can guarantee the technology will be significantly older. Items like phone books get a lot less wear 'n tear in the villages (and some old bodach would just repaint/repair it if it got tatty), and the upgrade budget wouldn't really focus on the great wild land North o' Glasgae. Glasgow and Edinburgh would be up-to-date, Aberdeen too if the oil boom has started, and maybe a few posh areas with regular upperclass visitors like Cawdor. But it's pot luck for the rest.

I can't help with the question, apart from saying that I only remember push button payphones from the late 80s when I started occasionally using them.

Also, the phonebox (not a pretty red one, more's the pity) in "my" village is probably the only one on the whole of the UK which doesn't have even the faintest whiff of urine!

I moved to the sticks last April and had no landline (or internet - grrrrr!) for five weeks due to BT's incompetence and, because the mobile signal is iffy round here (and the house's 18 inch thick walls don't help), I had to use the thing every so often. I used to give my Olds a quick ring on my mobile and then they'd phone the phonebox. My dad's first question was "Does it smell like a bloke's loo?"

1979 I think, according to this site: http://www.britishtelephones.com/histuk.htm

I recall them appearing through the 1980s, mostly along with the new style phone boxes that BT introduced after privatisation. Looking on the internet it seems some push buttons were appearing from very late seventies, in places like airports. But for your payphone in a box on the street it would be some time in the 80s. It would certainly depend on where your character is using one though.

I remember the rotary ones so it must be the mid eighties at least.

I remember watching a news item about how tough and vandal resistant the touch tone phones had to be. Probably about 1987.