3rd October 2009

Web Page No 774


FIRST PICTURE: POST WAR ROAD SIGNS.







SECOND PICTURE: THE TRADITIONAL PHONE BOX WITH BUTTONS ‘A’ AND ‘B’.




On the Streets


Walking along the street the other day I came to a set of traffic lights and as I waited I remembered that when we were kids each set of traffic lights were preceded by a rubber counting strip set into the tarmac. It was always a challenge for us to jump up and down on the strip to try to get the light to change, of course it never worked as we were far too light to make any impact on the mechanism but we would always try. But then I thought, with the coming of electronics we do not see these strips any more, when did they go? I really do not know. This naturally set me off to thinking about other street items we no longer see.


The first thing I thought about was lamps and lamp posts. In the 1960’s most of the major roads were illuminated by large square glass lamps which gave off an eerie blue glow which made everyone look as though they were dead! But the minor roads were lit by what looked like conventional light bulbs (I assume they were a different voltage from the domestic ones, otherwise they would not have lasted long), which gave a warm yellowish glow. From the top of Portsdown hill looking down on Portsmouth the scene showed a fascinating view of different coloured lights all over the city. Today, of course, the City is lit wholly by modern lights with their bright orange glow, far more efficient than the old ones but nowhere near as pretty from a distance! Associated with street lights were lamp posts and in the minor roads these were silver painted cast items with the city crest set into the door at the bottom. This also applied to the long disused tram poles that survived in certain areas in the city and the trolley bus poles.

Something else which is long gone is the policeman on point duty, standing in the middle of a cross roads keeping traffic moving. For greater visibility the Officer would wear long white arm bands on each arm and during evening rush hours in the dark days of winter he was very often illuminated by a big overhead light. Of course the most famous traffic constable was the one on Fratton Bridge, PC ‘Dutch’ Holland, I am sure you all remember him and if you look back at my emails three or four years ago you will find a whole article about him.


Even the road signs have changed! Remember the School sign before the one of the two children stepping off the kerb. The flaming torch was used for many years and affectionately known by generations of school children as the ice cream cone. The hospital sign used to be a black St. Johns cross on white background which was replaced by the simple ‘H’ years ago, but the strange thing is that the sign for an ungated railway crossing is still a steam engine and we have not used them regularly on the main line railway for decades. A sign which has subtly changed is the hill or gradient sign, I knew what a 1 in 12 meant but I have to think what a 20% gradient means!

What else? Bus stop signs without the words ‘Fare Stage’ attached to them, telephone boxes which took pennies and were worked by pushing button ‘A’ and ‘B’. Police boxes small and large like the very large one at the top of the Eastern Road. Bubble gum machines that took ha’pennies and pennies, milk machines, postage stamp machines (where have they gone?), newspapers hanging in racks outside the paper shop, a match stand on the counter of the tobacconists for the convenience of the smoker. Those were the days when you just turned up at the doctors and waited to be seen and did not have to telephone (if you had one) for an appointment and if you asked for a home visit your own doctor actually turned up on your doorstep.


Flashing Belisha Beacons, road sweepers with their hand carts, drain cleaners with long snorkels which sucked up the muck and dustmen who carried the dustbins on their shoulders and emptied them into side filling lorries.

Ah well so much for memories, I am sure you can add a whole list of things to the items that I have mentioned. I look forward to hearing from you.


So stay in touch
Peter

DUSTYKEAT@aol.com
Pj.keat@ntlworld.com

YOU WRITE:
Peter Writes: -

I have recently read your Manor Court Update. I went through school at Court Lane from Infants to Juniors to senior Secondary Modern at Court Lane School in Hillary Avenue. Manor Court started as I left the 5th year in September 1958. I now live in Murcia, Espania. I started school at Court Lane Infants in 1948 having first attended a preparatory school in Carmarthen Avenue Run by a Miss Neville. My parents had a Chemist Shop in Cosham High Street, "Bakers of Cosham". Every morning, A miss Woodman picked my brother Robert and I up in the High Street, And walked with us along the Havant Road to Carmarthen Avenue, where she was a helper/teacher.

In 1948, I started at Court Lane Infants School which was at the Salisbury Road End of the School. This was before the new infants school was built at the other end of the site at the Court Lane End. In the same part of the infants school, was the Junior Girls school and after a gap, was the Boy's school, Juniors and seniors. I remember my parents taking me there on the first day of term in September and handing me over to the Head Mistress Miss Henderson. I seem to remember my first teacher was a Mrs Wallis? there was also Miss Haysom. We sat at very old fashioned desk's with an old canvas bag attached to the back of the chair for our books. I remember the names of one or two of the other children in my class. There was Elizabeth Primmer, who lived in Hillary Avenue, Mary Foster, Simon Ward, Pearl Wilson.



Griff Writes:

An elderly man in Queensland had owned a large property for several years. He had a dam in one of the lower paddocks where he had planted mango and avocado trees. The dam had been fixed up for swimming when it was built and he also had some picnic tables placed there in the shade of the fruit trees.

One evening the old farmer decided to go down to the dam to look it over, as he hadn't been there for a while. He grabbed a ten litre bucket to bring back some fruit. As he neared the dam, he heard voices shouting and laughing with glee. As he came closer he saw it was a bunch of young women skinny-dipping in his dam. He made the women aware of his presence and they all went to the deep end.One of the women shouted to him, 'We're not coming out until you leave!' The old man frowned, 'I didn't come down here to watch you ladies swim naked or make you get out of the dam naked.' Holding the bucket up he said....................

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'I'm here to feed the crocodile.'

NEWS AND VIEWS:
Mary Travers, of Peter, Paul & Mary, lost her battle with leukemia at the age of 72. She died in a Danbury, Connecticut hospital on Wednesday September 16th.

ON THIS DAY 3RD OCTOBER 1960-1965

On 03/10/1960 the number one single was Tell Laura I Love Her - Ricky Valance and the number one album was Down Drury Lane to Memory Lane - A Hundred and One Strings. The top rated TV show was No Hiding Place (AR) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.


On 03/10/1961 the number one single was Johnny Remember Me - John Leyton and the number one album was Ipswich Town. The top rated TV show was "Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £not very interesting and 13.25 were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.The big news story of the day was Sunday Night at the London Palladium (ATV)".


On 03/10/1962 the number one single was She's Not You - Elvis Presley and the number one album was Best of Ball Barber & Bilk. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.


On 03/10/1963 the number one single was She Loves You - The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.


On 03/10/1964 the number one single was I'm Into Something Good - Herman's Hermits and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.


On 03/10/1964 the number one single was I'm Into Something Good - Herman's Hermits and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.


On 03/10/1965 the number one single was Tears - Ken Dodd and the number one album was Help - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

Web Page No 772

FIRST PICTURE: FRANKIE VAUGHAN AT THE HEIGHT OF HIS CAREER




SECOND PICTURE: EAST COSHAM HOUSE WHICH WAS PUT UP FOR SALE IN MAY FOR £1,250.000. THIS WAS MY GREAT UNCLES HOUSE UNFORTUNATELY WE COME FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE FAMILY!!!


Another school pal has just come on board, welcome Peter Barlow.


FRANKIE VAUGHAN

He did high kicks, chuckled in the middle of a song, made love to Marilyn Monroe on screen and, at one time, was Britain's most successful popular entertainer. Frankie Vaughan, who died aged 71 in 1999, was loved for himself as well as for his talent. The fact that boys' clubs all over Britain once had plaques and photographs of him in their huts and halls told another part of his story. He gave them his money as well as his talent.

One of the reasons for his huge success was that he was not like the other crooners of his generation. He had a very distinctive style - he wore a tuxedo on stage, and carried a shiny top-hat and a cane. Entertainers had not done that for over twenty years when he hit it big in the early 1950s. His theme song, Give Me The Moonlight- and others like Green Door, Garden Of Eden and Kisses Sweeter Than Wine - were hits at a time that young men were still being enlisted into national service while their girls danced in full frilly full skirts.

Later, in the 1960s, came Tower Of Strength and Loop De Loop. He also recorded the title numbers of shows such as Cabaret, Mame and, biggest of all, Hello Dolly. His voice was also different from other pop singers. It wasn't just the chuckle, which, along with the kick, was always the cue for the girls to scream. You couldn't miss the Liverpool twang - he put that city on the map long before the Beatles made their appearance. But there was something else. Like his idol, Al Jolson, there was much of the music of the synagogue in his voice. In fact, his earliest appearances were singing in the choir at services in Leeds, the city where he grew up.

He was born Frank Abelson in Liverpool his parents struggled to provide a decent home for their son and two daughters. Both parents seemed to spend every waking hour working - his father as an upholsterer, his mother as a seamstress. As a result, young Frank spent a great deal of time with his grandmother. It was she who, indirectly, was responsible for his change of name. When he first went into show business, his agent, Billy Marsh, said that Frank Abelson wasn't the name to get him up in lights. Frank remembered that his grandmother always called him - in her Russian Jewish accent - "my number vawn grandson". So he took her at his word and became Frankie Vaughan.

Before that, he had thought of becoming a boxer. He had taken up boxing at the Lancaster Lads Club, this was the beginning of his life-long connection with the Boys' Club movement. He also studied at Lancaster College of Art, to which had won a scholarship at the age of 14. There, he sang in the dance band but his studies were interrupted by national service in the Royal Army Medical Corps, although he spent most of his time boxing and was an army champion. On demob, he became a student teacher at Leeds College of Art.

Soon afterwards, he managed to go to London on the proceeds of a prize to design a furniture exhibition stand. He came second in the radio version of Hughie Green's Opportunity Knocks talent show - working with a girl singer named Irene Griffen. They had no intention of developing a permanent act; it was the only way that Frankie could get on the show. Then, he had his first big break: at the Hulme Hippodrome, where he topped the bill at the then huge sum of £100 a week. In 1954, Vaughan made his first recording for HMV, My Sweetie Went Away. He sang with the Ken Mackintosh Band numbers like No Help Wanted and Look At That Girl. He then really made it big with a tour of the then vast Moss Empire variety theatre circuit, during which he discovered an old piece of sheet music in a Glasgow shop. It was Give Me The Moonlight. His record of the song sold more than a million copies, establishing him with the young fans who bought the new 45 rpm discs as well as the versions on 78’s.

In 1960, he was invited to go to Hollywood to make the film Let's Make Love, with Marilyn Monroe. He had earlier appeared in Arthur Askey's comedy Ramsbottom Rides Again (1956) and a musical, The Lady Is A Square, with Anna Neagle. Marilyn Monroe tried to entice him into an affair, but he maintained that he loved his wife, Stella, whom he had met at the Locarno ballroom, Leeds, after the war, and that they needed to live in London. Back home, he filled the Talk of the Town restaurant for weeks, and became a sort of elder statesman among British performers. He also carried out significant charitable work on social projects for which he received an OBE in 1965 and a CBE in 1997. In 1985, Vaughan had one of his most notable successes - starring in what turned out to be his swansong role, the lead in the musical 42nd Street at Drury Lane. He left the cast after a year at the start of what turned out to be a terminal series of illnesses. He died in 1999. Frankie Vaughan wrote his own his epitaph. "I am lucky to have a talent, lucky to have met such a wonderful girl as my wife Stella, lucky to have such a wonderful family, and lucky to have a job I adore." What else could anyone ask for?

In the summer of 2000 the Frankie Vaughan Archive was donated to Liverpool John Moores University by Mrs. Stella Vaughan. Frankie was an Honorary Fellow of the University. The archive consists of sheet music, scores, orchestral and band parts used by Frankie Vaughan throughout his career. Many of the scores and parts have handwritten notes relating to the occasions they were used, including stage directions, lead-ins and running orders for stage and television appearances.


Take Care

Peter

DUSTYKEAT@aol.com
Pj.keat@ntlworld.com
Thanks

Thanks to Copnorboy for sending me the YouTube film of Nero and the Gladiators.


YOU WRITE:

Griff writes:

I recently visited Southsea and was witnessing the demolition of the Savoy Ballroom which brought back a flood of memories of the good times spent there on a Friday and a Saturday night. Just think of all the bands and the groups of the time who appeared there and who went on to be famous if not already famous. I can think of a few and many I met back stage waiting to go on for their turn. Freddy and the Dreamers, Spotniks, Swinging Blue Jeans, Shane Fenton and the Fentones (he went on later to become Alvin Stardust (!) ) Billy J Kramer and The Dakota's, The Searchers, The Fortunes, Paul Jones... and you could probably fill in the gaps of those I can't remember.
I use to help out a famous local Portsmouth band of the day called Ricky Dean and the Rivals who use to front the stage before the big names came on.
The lead singer's real name was Ron Rickwood and he worked at Gauntlett & Walkers Dairies in Purbrook (now a housing estate ! ) in the day job and I got to know him because I worked there as a "Saturday Boy" bottling milk in the dairy plant.
Like all singers in those days they were just waiting for their 'big break' and a record deal and so many people went from total obscurity to being famous in just a week or so and many did. Helen Shapiro instantly springs to mind as just one of many others in the early 60's.
I got to know Ron really well and in no time at all I was helping out the band with setting up the stage equipment.
The big time eluded this group even after they had won the South Coast Best Group Award and eventually they split up like most pop groups do. Anyway, it was a great 18 months or so helping out.
Ron is still singing in the Northern Clubs and Holiday Parks and we still keep in touch from time to time by email




Above is the only known photo of Ricky Dean and the Rivals taken at the Savoy Ballroom circa. Summer 1961 .........unless you know any different of course.


NEWS AND VIEWS:
Gerry Marsden of Gerry & the Pacemakers, premiered his new documentary on the band, "It's Gonna Be Alright," in Liverpool on Wednesday August 26th. Gerry also launched the campaign to get his home town selected as the host for the 2018 soccer World Cup.


ON THIS DAY 26TH SEPTEMBER 1960-1965

On 26/09/1960 the number one single was Apache - The Shadows and the number one album was Down Drury Lane to Memory Lane - A Hundred and One Strings.The top rated TV show was The Army Game (Granada) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.


On 26/09/1961 the number one single was Reach for the Stars / Climb Ev'ry Mountain - Shirley Bassey and the number one album was The Shadows - Shadows. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.


On 26/09/1962 the number one single was She's Not You - Elvis Presley and the number one album was Best of Ball Barber & Bilk. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Flood kills 333 in Barcelona.

On 26/09/1963 the number one single was She Loves You - The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.


On 26/09/1964 the number one single was I'm Into Something Good - Herman's Hermits and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.


On 26/09/1965 the number one single was Make It Easy On Yourself - Walker Brothers and the number one album was Help - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

Web Page No 770

YOU NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD.



FIRST PICTURE: WITH AVAILABILITY OF HIRE PURCHASE A WASHING MACHINE IN MANY HOMES WAS NOW POSSIBLE



SECOND PICTURE: THE FAMOUS SPAGHETTI HARVEST FROM BBC TV’S PANORAMA






Firstly welcome to a new schoolmate Paul Fenwick. Paul left Manor Court in 1964 and love to hear from anyone who remembers him.


YOU NEVER HAD IT SO GOOD.

Have you ever thought that the period of time when we all left school, 1960-1965, saw so many major changes in life in general throughout the country. The Prime Minister at the time Harold McMillan, SuperMac, had convinced us all in 1958 that ‘we had never had it so good’ and to a degree that was correct. So let’s just, as the film newsreel used to say, take a look at life in 1960-1962 and see what some of those changes were. These were the years when many our traditional ideas and those of our parents were challenged, the years that saw the end to National Service and how often since have we heard ‘a spell in the Army is what the youth of today need’.

To the average family hire purchase became possible and the never, never was soon to allow many households to afford the luxuries that had long been denied to them.

Our idea of a sports car, the Morgan or MG shaped car was totally changed by the introduction of the sleek E type Jaguar. This was a car, which sold for just £2,196 when the average weekly wage was £8 6s 8d for a 46 hour week. Also about now the millionth Morris Minor rolled off the production line.

What else? BBC TV dropped Children’s Hours from the radio schedules after over 40 years, George Blake was convicted of spying and sentenced to 42 years in jail. Great Britain applied to join the Common Market and massive anti nuclear protests were staged outside the Russian Embassy. These were protests where celebrities joined in and were arrested, people like Vanessa Redgrave, George Melly, Bertrand Russell and John Osbourne.

Prices of everyday items rose. A pack of cigarettes was 1/9d for 10 and petrol, if you could afford an old banger, was 3/10p a gallon. Whilst talking about road in 1961 the government announced the slow introduction of pedestrian operated crossings, they were soon to be known as Pelican crossings and would eventually replace the old zebra crossings with their Belisah Beacons.

It was as long ago as 1961 that the British Government agreed in principle to the introduction of decimal currency but it would not take effect for another ten years!

The big news locally in the early 60’s was the discovery of Fishbourne Roman Villa and for weeks many volunteers and almost as many experts spent hours excavating the site. On completely the other side of things the Russians succeeded in putting a man, Yuri Gagarin, into space albeit only on an up and down basis.

On the TV front Danny Blanchflower famously refused to be the subject of ‘This is your Life’ and Panorama ran that famous Spaghetti tree story on the first of April 1957.

In 1952 tea bags had been introduced and in 1960 Nestles tried to introduce coffee bags but these were never to catch on. But one sort of food bag did excite the public’s interest in 1960 when Vesta introduced their boil in the bag range of curries and Chinese foods.

I have spoken several times about the food of the 60’s, the clothes of the 60’s and the music of the 60’s so I will not touch on them here but instead look at inventions of the period.

Firstly the 1950’s saw these for the first time:- The World's First Credit Card (1950) In 1950, the Diners’ Club issued the first credit card, invented by Diners' Club founder Frank McNamara, in the United States for use in restaurants. Super Glue (1950). Superglue is actually a chemical substance called cyanoacrylate that was originally discovered by Dr. Harry Coover during a research project.
Mr. Potato Head was invented and patented in 1952 by George Lerner of New York. The idea was based on an earlier toy known as “make a face”.

The Black Box Flight Recorder. David Warren of the Aeronautical Research Laboratories in Melbourne, Australia was involved in the accident investigations related to the mysterious crash of the world’s first jet-powered aircraft, the Comet, in 1953. He argued that a cockpit voice recorder would be a useful means of solving otherwise unexplainable aircraft accidents. The idea initially raised little interest, so David decided to design and build an experimental unit to demonstrate the concept.

Liquid Paper (1956). Bette Nesmith Graham never set out to be an inventor, her vocation in life was to be an artist. However, after the Second World War ended she found herself divorced and a single parent (the child Michael Nesmith, later went on to become a member of The Monkees) living in Dallas and working as a secretary. Being an artist and noticing that typing errors at work were costly, she considered better ways to correct them. Using the theory that if artists could paint over their mistakes, then typists should be able to do something similar, she mixed up her first batch of Liquid paper by using her own blenderin her kitchen at home.
New toys of the time were: Fuzzy Felt (1950), Matchbox Cars (1953), Play-Doh (1956), Corgi Toys (1956) and Barbie Dolls (1959).
Now the 60’s: The Laser (1960) Albert Einstein laid the foundation for the invention of the laser in a published paper as far back as 1917, but it wasn't until 1960 that a working laser became a reality.
Light Emiting Diodes - LEDs (1962) The first practical visible-spectrum (red) LED was developed in 1962 by Nick Holonyak Jr., while working at General Electric Company.
The Computer Mouse (1963) Douglas Engelbart at the Stanford Research Institute invented the mouse in 1963 after extensive usability testing. He never received any royalties for it, as his patent was owned by the Company.
Astroturf (1964) AstroTurf was co-invented in 1964 by James M. Faria and Robert T. Wright, employees of Monsanto. It was patented in 1967.
New toys of the time were: Mouse Trap Board Game (1963), The Operation Board Game (1965), Action Man (1966), Action Man (1966)

Stay in touch and keep those memories coming.

DUSTYKEAT@aol.com

Pj.keat@ntlworld.com


YOU WRITE:

Had this sent in:-
The other day someone asked, ‘What was your favourite fast food when you were young?’ I replied ‘We didn’t have fast food then, all food was slow’.
'C'mon, seriously. Where did you eat?'
‘It was a place called home’ I explained. Mum cooked every day and when dad got home from work, we sat down together at the dining room table, and if I did not like what she put on my plate, I was allowed to sit there until I did like it.
By this time, the kid was laughing so hard I was afraid he was going to suffer serious internal damage, so I didn't tell him the part about how I had to have permission to leave the table.
Here are some other things I would have told him about my childhood if his system could stand it:-
Some parents never owned their own home, wore Levis, set foot on a golf course, travelled out of the country or had a Credit Card.
My parents never drove me to school.
We never had a telephone at home.
Pizzas were not delivered but milk was.


NEWS AND VIEWS:
A street in the Smogorzewie district of northern Poland was named after the Beatles. A plaque noting the honour was also erected.


ON THIS DAY 19TH SEPTEMBER 1960-1965

On 19/09/1960 the number one single was Apache - The Shadows and the number one album was Down Drury Lane to Memory Lane - A Hundred and One Strings. The top rated TV show was No Hiding Place (AR) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.The big news story of the day was Parking tickets and traffic wardens introduced in London

On 19/09/1961 the number one single was Johnny Remember Me - John Leyton and the number one album was Ipswich Town. The top rated TV show was "Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £not very interesting and 13.25 were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Take Your Pick (AR)".

On 19/09/1962 the number one single was She's Not You - Elvis Presley and the number one album was West Side Story Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 19/09/1963 the number one single was She Loves You – The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 19/09/1964 the number one single was You Really Got Me - Kinks and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 19/09/1965 the number one single was (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - Rolling Stones and the number one album was Help - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

WEB PAGE NO 768

FIRST PICTURE: Alan Price in Concert at the Gosport Waterfront Festival August 2009.



SECOND PICTURE: an icon from the 1960’s the Isetta bubble car.




THIRD PICTURE: A legacy from before the war a Triumph Mayflower its angled ‘modern’ look was not manufactured until post war. It was well appointed with walnut fittings and was unusual but not popular and having only a side valve engine soon fell by the wayside when the overhead valve engines came into production.






ANY MORE FARES PLEASE.

As kids most of us had dressing up clothes and sets some home made and some bought from the shops which were usually kept in the toy box. The commercially bought sets came in various guises. To start with there was the Bus Conductors or Conductresses outfit with its cap and badge, a rack of tram like tickets and a ticket machine which punched the tickets with a satisfying ‘ting’ every time. Actually this was not all make believe I am old enough to remember the last trams in London and the conductor punching your ticket was actually something that I really did experience. Moving forward to childhood in North Portsmouth where the bus and trolley bus reigned supreme the one desire of every child was to be given the end of the ticket roll by the bus conductor. Do you remember these ends had a red line through them to alert the conductor that the roll was running out and it would be extreme good fortune if you happened to be on the bus when this happened and be offered the end of the roll to play with.

Then, of course, there was the Cowboy outfit, ten gallon hat, waistcoat with Sheriffs badge, chaps, belt holster and six gun ready to fire caps and, we hoped, ready scare all the neighbours. To compliment this some folks had Indian outfits with war bonnet, Indian dress and a tomahawk. However these outfits were never popular as the Indians never won.

Sometimes we would come across a girl in a cowgirl or Indian squaw outfit but that was rare, the more common outfit for a little girl was a Nurse. As far as I remember these outfits normally consisted of a white apron and little cap, both with a big red cross on them, a cape, a toy thermometer and stethoscope and little ruffs for the sleeves and to carry the instruments and bandages and slings a nurses bag. We always seemed to be satisfied with simple things which we could play make believe with when we were kids, no electronics for us! Although later on I did have a chemistry set.

Pirates were also popular and sets with eye patches, head scarf, cutlasses and pistols could always be bought in the local toy shop, along with little bags of golden doubloons and a stuffed parrot.

One of the most popular games was the Toy Post Office which came complete with writing paper envelopes, postage stamps of Toyland, postal orders and best of all a big rubber stamp and ink pad so that the owner could stamp everything in sight with an ‘official’ rubber stamp. Closely allied to the Post Office set was the Shop set. This normally came as a General Store (Arkwright had nothing on these sets)! It always fascinated me to see the miniature packets of products we all knew so well. Persil, Rinso, Brillo, Atora Suet, Bluebird Toffees, Sunlight Soap, Robinson’s Jam including a miniature Golly and oh! so many products from home. The set normally came with a cash register, some little paper bags and lots of other odds and ends that were found in the corner shop. I never did have a shop set but I do remember being bought a toy cash register at some point.
Looking back is fun but looking at what the modern child plays with would really have had us baffled as kids. My 5-year-old grandson knows his way round a computer and will very soon be putting Pam and I to shame. But it is great to see that still one of his favourite toys, the ones that come out again and again are the toy cars, so maybe not so much has changed.

Stay in touch and keep those memories coming.
DUSTYKEAT@aol.com
Pj.keat@ntlworld.com
THIRD PICTURE: ALAN PRICE PERFORMING AT THE GOSPORT WATERFRONT FESTIVAL A COUPLE OF WEEKS AGO.

YOU WRITE:
STEVE WRITES:
Why
do Tesco's make the sick walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes at the front.

do people order double cheeseburgers,large fries, and a diet coke.

do banks leave both doors open and then chain the pens to the counters.

do we leave cars worth thousands of pounds in the driveway and put our useless junk in the garage.

do they have drive-up ATM machines with Braille lettering.

EVER WONDER ...
Why the sun lightens our hair, but darkens our skin ?

Why women can't put on mascara with their mouth closed?

Why don't you ever see the headline 'Psychic Wins Lottery'?

Why is 'abbreviated' such a long word?

Why is it that doctors call what they do 'practice'?

Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor and dishwashing liquid made with real lemons?

Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?

Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?

Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat food?
Why didn't Noah swat those two mosquitoes?
Why do they sterilize the needle for lethal injections?

Why don't sheep shrink when it rains?
If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?

Why? Good question.

NEWS AND VIEWS:
The Who's Pete Townshend, mastermind behind "Tommy" and "Quadrophenia," has announced that he is writing a new musical-- to be premiered in 2011-- called "Floss." As a 19-year-old, with 'My Generation', I wrote the most explicitly ageist song in rock [singing 'Hope I die before I get old']. At 64, I now want to take on aging and mortality, using the powerfully angry context of rock'n'roll." The story centres on the marital difficulties of a middle-aged couple. "Floss," by the way, is the name of the wife. Some of the songs may see the light of day on a Who album in 2010.

ON THIS DAY 12TH SEPTEMBER 1960-1965

On 12/09/1960 the number one single was Apache - The Shadows and the number one album was Down Drury Lane to Memory Lane - A Hundred and One Strings. The top rated TV show was No Hiding Place (AR) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was MoT test introduced.

On 12/09/1961 the number one single was Johnny Remember Me - John Leyton and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 12/09/1962 the number one single was I Remember You - Frank Ifield and the number one album was Pot Luck - Elvis Presley. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 12/09/1964 the number one single was You Really Got Me - Kinks and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was Conservative Party Political Broadcast (all channels) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 12/09/1963 the number one single was She Loves You - The Beatles and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.The big news story of the day was 35 British tourists die in Pyrennees plane crash.

On 12/09/1965 the number one single was (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction - Rolling Stones and the number one album was Help - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

Web Page No 766

FIRST PICTURE: BARBARA KELLY

SECOND PICTURE: BERNARD BRADEN

BERNARD BRADEN AND BARBARA KELLY


Bernard Chastey Braden was born in Vancouver. He produced plays on CJOR Vancouver in the late 30s and early 40s and married Barbara Kelly in 1942 and they moved to Toronto the same year. Seven years later, he, his wife and two children moved to England. (A third child, Kim was born in London in 1949.) The radio show Breakfast with Braden began on Saturday morning, 21 January 1950, initially putting Bernard Braden alongside his dumb girlfriend, Pearl Carr this was followed by various sequels including Between Time, Bathtime and Bedlam with Braden. The usually straight BBC announcer was Ronald Fletcher who was drawn into the script which added to the ingenuity and enjoyment.

They made their television debut on An Evening at Home With Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly in 1951 but, though popular, it ran for only one series. But by the end of the 1950s, Barbara and Bernard were well-established figure on television and radio in Britain, but for the next decade her husband's career moved to the fore, with the success of his On the Braden Beat, one of the earliest consumer guidance programmes, which won a Bafta award in 1964 and ran on ATV for six years and was also an opening for performers such as Peter Cook, Jake Thackray and Tim Brooke-Taylor.. The programme was followed by Braden's Week on the BBC, which lasted four years.

Bernard Braden fell from grace when he advertised margarine on the BBC's commercial rival ITV; the BBC felt this was inconsistent with his role as the consumers' spokesman and the show was cancelled. Esther Rantzen, one of the researcher/presenters, went on to front a remarkably similar consumer show.
In 1976, he hosted a quiz show for London Weekend Television called The Sweepstakes Game. The show proved to be unsuccessful and no further programmes were made after the original series. He died in Camden, in 1993 aged 76, following a series of strokes.
Barbara Kelly was born on October 5 1924 at Vancouver, British Colombia, and was given elocution lessons as a young girl. Barbara hated the stage, but her mother was a frustrated actress. Her first professional engagement was with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, when she played the Virgin Mary in a Nativity Play.
She married in 1942 – "to escape from my mother" and having been warned by her father: "Never do anything to besmirch the name of Kelly or I will kill you." Two years and two children later, she said, it occurred to her to ask: "How can you besmirch a name like Kelly?"

She was soon in demand for radio work and also toured a series of small theatres across Canada before making her first television appearances in The Stage Series.
Meanwhile Barbara Kelly was one of showbusiness's brightest personalities in the 1950s, often appearing with her husband, she was probably best known for her appearances on the panel show What's My Line? which featured Eamon Andrews as the chairman, and David Nixon, Gilbert Harding and Isobel Barnett. This simple format proved immensely popular, and the programme ran until 1963. When it was briefly revived in 1984, Eamon Andrews and Barbara Kelly were the only original members of the team to appear.
Her other television work included Kelly's Eye, Criss Cross Quiz and Leave Your Name and Number as well as the sitcom B and B in 1968, where she again teamed up with her husband, and in which their younger daughter Kim also appeared.

During the 1970s Barbara Kelly and her husband ran Adanac Productions, which they had set up 20 years earlier, and which by then was specialising in presentations at business conferences. Barbara Kelly then began an agency offering advice to celebrities on managing their image and career direction. Through her company Prime Performers she also offered the services of a number of figures – including Barbara Windsor, Joan Collins, Raymond Baxter, Norman Tebbit and Sir John Harvey-Jones – for the after-dinner-speaking circuit. She also ran Speakerpower, which provides actors to train people in public speaking and presentations.

Barbara Kelly took a no-nonsense approach to most things; even during an armed raid in 1978, she asked the robbers – who had knocked her husband out – to "take off the Noddy hats and have a drink". Despite having suffered from cancer during the 1980s, she nursed her husband during his own final illness. She died in 2007 aged 82 of her three children only her son predeceased her.
Take Care

Peter

DUSTYKEAT@aol.com
Pj.keat@ntlworld.com

SUE WRITES:

I was at college with two girls whose fathers had connections with Concord, Sue Whittle`s father was a test pilot for the aircraft and the other whose name does not readily come to mind as I type, was an engineer, In her words when the first flight was shown and reported " you would have thought he had built it all by himself and flown it too, he was that proud!"



NEWS AND VIEWS:

I expect that most of you will have heard that Simon Dee died on 29th August at the age of 72. Simon Dee, real name Cyril Nicholas Henty-Dodd was well known in the 1960’s as a television interviewer and disc jockey who hosted a twice-weekly BBC TV chat show, Dee Time. After moving from the BBC to LWT in 1970 he was dropped and his career never recovered. He died from bone cancer leaving three ex-wives, four children, and four grandchildren.

ON THIS DAY 5TH SEPTEMBER 1960-1965

On 05/09/1960 the number one single was Apache - The Shadows and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Rawhide (ITV) and the box office smash was Psycho. A pound of today's money was worth £13.68 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the day was Cassius Clay wins Olympic Boxing gold.

On 05/09/1961 the number one single was Johnny Remember Me - John Leyton and the number one album was Black & White Minstrel Show - George Mitchell Minstrels. The top rated TV show was Sunday Night at the London Palladium (ATV) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Ipswich Town were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 05/09/1962 the number one single was I Remember You - Frank Ifield and the number one album was West Side Story Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was Lawrence of Arabia. A pound of today's money was worth £12.89 and Everton were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 05/09/1963 the number one single was Bad to Me - Billy J Kramer and the number one album was Please Please Me - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Great Escape. A pound of today's money was worth £12.64 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 05/09/1964 the number one single was Have I the Right? - Honeycombs and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was No Hiding Place (AR) and the box office smash was Dr Strangelove. A pound of today's money was worth £12.24 and Manchester United were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 05/09/1965 the number one single was I Got You Babe - Sonny and Cher and the number one album was Help - The Beatles. The top rated TV show was Coronation Street (Granada) and the box office smash was The Sound of Music. A pound of today's money was worth £11.69 and Liverpool were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.