Web Page  No 2190

1^st September 2015

Top Picture: The torpedo lake

Second Picture: The aerial accident

Third Picture: 1920’s picture showing original radio towers

HORSEA ISLAND

As a teenager who had friends with dinghy’s there were very few places we did not get to in both Langston and Portsmouth Harbours, even Whale Island was a possible landing place, if you stayed out of sight on the west side of the island. But there was always one no go area and that was Horsea Island. Whenever we approached it there was always some form of guard around, there was high fencing and the whole island really bristled with radio masts and antennae. Many of the Royal Naval establishments around the harbour were familiar to all of us, including much of the mothball fleet which was moored off of Gosport Hardway but Horsea Island was always a bit of a mystery.

Horsea Island was, until 1885, two islands, Great Horsea and Little Horsea and both are known to have been places of agriculture, since Roman times. At low tides the two islands were of 166 and 56 acres in size, the larger being part of Wymering and the lesser part of Porchester. They had originally been connected to the mainland by three 'wade ways', one to Tipner Point, another to Hilsea and one to Stamshaw but the first fell out of use as Tipner developed as a Naval Magazine, the second was lost to major episodes of flooding whilst the Stamshaw route remained until the 1970's but was eventually lost when the motorway was built.

 In December 1884 the Admiralty asked the then owner, Mr. Bovill-Smith, if they could purchase both islands so they could develop new forms of warfare, in this instance, the torpedo. It was plain from the outset that the Fleet Torpedo Department would need a substantial stretch of water in which it could carry out experiments. Trials were carried out at Stokes Bay, off Whale Island and in Portchester Lake but none of them were suitable. So it was proposed that the two Horsea Islands be joined to form an area in which a suitable range could be constructed. To achieve this thousands of tons of filling was needed to bridge the space between the islands. It was decided that the chalk under Portsdown Hill would be used and a railway track was constructed between the hill and the foreshore at Paulsgrove where the chalk was loaded onto barges then pulled across to the islands by a steam engine brought across the Hilsea wadeway for the purpose. Much of the building work itself was carried out by convicts from Kingston Prison who lived on the island for up to two and half years, the time it took to complete the project.

Horsea Torpedo Range was officially opened in March 1889. The range was 800yds long, 20yds wide at the firing end and 80yds at the other with a depth varying from 20 to 30 feet. The base was manned by 9 seaman and one Petty Officer but within a year this had been increased to 6 Petty Officers, 14 Seamen and 5 stokers, the whole coming under a Commissioned Gunner who reported to the Captain of HMS Vernon and travelled to the island daily. By 1898 a permanent residence for the officer-in-charge had been built on the island. 

Torpedo technology developed rapidly and by the late 1890s the range was too short but it took until 1905 before work to extend it to 1,115yds was complete.

In 1899 the Navy adopted the Marconi system of Wireless Telegraphy and set up a school to develop its use at HMS Vernon. The early systems were low powered. In 1902 the station was upgraded to medium power enabling clear signals to be transmitted up to 300 miles at sea. This was extended to 1000 miles by 1906 now high powered transmitters were available and the Navy set up three new stations at Gibraltar, Cleethorpes and Horsea Island. 

The new station at Horsea consisted of 4 wooden 150 ft. aerial masts with 8 'spreader' masts of 60 feet surrounding them. Power was delivered via an underwater cable from the dockyard. For the first time security at Horsea became a serious issue and fences were erected around the masts and an extended guardroom manned 24 hours a day. Developments were being made with such speed that this first station was out of date within 6 years and plans were made for an array of 4 masts of an overall height of 446 feet, which when erected were the tallest in Europe. The first went up in 1913 to be followed by two more in 1914, the last finally being erected until 1921.

The masts dominated the skyline and were constructed as a triangular wooden lattice 7 feet each side. They had no taper and were supported by galvanised steel cables attached to anchor sheaves. The first three had hardly begun their work before one of them was involved in an accident when Flight Commander E.A. de L. Ville flew his seaplane into a mist over Portsmouth and struck one of the masts at a height of 360 feet. Hearing the crash three sailors began climbing up the outside of the mast until they reached the plane where the found the pilot hanging over the front of a wing, unconscious. They managed to get him into a bosun's chair and lower him to the ground where he made a full recovery. The three men who climbed the mast were awarded medals for bravery; the mast, despite repair retained a permanent kink at it's highest level for the rest of its life.

By the end of the Great War torpedo technology had almost rendered the Horsea range redundant it's 1,100 yds was no longer sufficient. This work was largely transferred to the Stokes Bay Torpedo Experimental Station but Horsea was not neglected, instead it received a full modernisation of its equipment so that it could play a major role in the development of motor torpedo boats and submarines. The wireless station also received an upgrade which enabled it to take part in various experimental technologies.

By 1933 wireless technology no longer depended on the wooden masts and they were replaced by steel towers of 180 and 100 feet in height. The steel towers themselves became redundant after the second world war though the wireless station remained operational until about 1960. Horsea's role in later years became diversified, from providing facilities for swimming lessons, the training of divers and fire fighters and amphibious tank trials.

In the early 1970s Horsea’s status as an island disappeared when much of the adjacent harbour was reclaimed to form Port Solent along with a mountainous land-fill site. The original range can now be accessed by road though it remains a serving Naval base attached to HMS Excellent. 

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On this day 1^st September 1960-1965

On 01/09/1960 the number one single was Apache - The Shadows and the number one album was South Pacific Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was 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 01/09/1961 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 Blackpool Tower Circus (ATV) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Tottenham Hotspur were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. The big news story of the week was Berlin Wall completed.

On 01/09/1962 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 01/09/1963 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 01/09/1964 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 01/09/1965 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.

Web Page  No 2188

25^th August 2015

 Top Picture: Cliff Richard and the Shadows at the Royal Variety Performance

Second Picture: The Beatles at the Show

 Third Picture: Librance

The Royal Variety Performance

History should have recorded that the first Royal Variety Performance was performed in Edinburgh in July 1911 to coincide with the Coronation of King George V. Tragically, it records that the venue, the Empire Palace Theatre, burned to the ground some weeks earlier killing some of the performers who were due to take part. Understandably, the event was cancelled. It went ahead the following year but this time at The Palace Theatre, Shaftsbury Avenue, London, but would not establish itself as an annual event for another decade.

For those that accuse the Royal Variety Performance for going on too long, its worth pointing out that that first performance, actually called the Royal Music Hall Performance, in the presence of Their Majesties King George V and Queen Mary, listed no less than 142 artistes. These included many of music-halls greats such as Sir Harry Lauder, Lupino Lane, Harry Tate, Little Tich, Wilkie Bard, Harry Champion, George Robey, Vesta Tilley, Anna Pavlova and Harry Weldon. There was however, one noticeable absence. It was felt that some of the more risqué numbers that made up the repertoire of Marie Lloyd would not be suitable for the Royal audience and so any embarrassment, one of the greatest entertainers of that era was not invited. Instead, she held a rival performance in a nearby theatre, which she advertised as being 'by command of the British Public.'

In view of the previous year's tragedy it was decided to give the proceeds of the first Command Performance to the Variety Artistes Benevolent Fund, to help maintain Brinsworth House in Twickenham, England, a nursing home for retired performers that had opened a year previously, establishing a tradition that has remained ever since.

This first staging was a lavish occasion; the theatre was decorated with 3 million roses, which were draped around the auditorium and over the boxes. But as lavish as it was, that was the last Royal Variety until 1919 when it was next performed at the London Coliseum and Harry Marlow, a one-time comedian who was running Brinsworth House, thought of instituting an annual 'Royal Variety' beginning the cycle in 1921 with only occasional gaps up to and during the War. The show returned as an annual event in 1945 with just one interruption since, in 1956, the year of the Suez crisis.

The line-up for 1956 included Gracie Fields, Liberace, the Crazy Gang, and Winifred Atwell. Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh and John Mills had rehearsed a version of Fred Astaire's Top Hat number and as a finale the entire cast were going to dress in Liberace suits. Then, four hours before the performance was due to start the organiser, Val Parnell, received a call from Buckingham Palace to say that because of the landing at Suez and the fighting, it was felt that it would be inappropriate for the royal party to attend. The entire performance was cancelled.

By 1958, Parnell felt that he had had enough of organising the show and handed over to Bernard Delfont. For his first performance, Delfont decided to concentrate more on home-grown talent so out went a lot of the international headliners and in came the likes of Roy Castle, Max Bygraves, Harry Secombe and an entertainer who would make the London Palladium stage almost his own; Bruce Forsyth. "We were into the age of television and the public expected the Royal Variety to recognise the fact by making room for TV names like Charlie Drake, Bernard Bresslaw, David Nixon and Bruce Forsyth". However, it would be another two years before the show was actually televised.

In 1960 the television cameras were allowed to be present at a Royal Variety Performance. Until the end of the 1950s theatre owners were concerned that too much exposure would deter audiences from going to see live variety. But as music hall continued to decline it was actually thought that television might reverse the fortunes of music hall and revive interest in the real thing. So, in 1960 Lew Grade at ATV snapped up the exclusive rights for the Royal Show. The programme was presented on Sunday 22nd May 1960 across the entire ITV network. The two-and-a-half-hour production, under Jack Hylton, starred comedians Harry Worth, Charlie Drake and Benny Hill, pop singers Cliff Richard and Adam Faith, US actor Robert Horton and the flamboyant pianist Liberace, among the sixty or so top-line entertainers. When it went out it was quite clear that the commercial channel had a huge hit on their hands. The following year ITV had another smash hit but an enormous row erupted with the BBC. Delfont was accused of nepotism; Lew Grade was his brother, and the BBC, who up to that point had shown no interest in the show claimed that ATV would never have got the TV rights had the two not been related. Delfont backed down and agreed that each channel should televise the show on an alternate basis. The BBC agreed but Lew Grade was livid.

The next landmark for the show came in 1976 when it was broadcast on television live for the first time. But the show was beset with problems. A mike was knocked over in the opening number, the lights went out on ventriloquist Roger de Courcey and a sound fault allowed the orchestra to drown out the voice of impressionist Mike Yarwood. In spite of a trouble free live show the following year the decision was taken to record the show and broadcast the edited highlights from 1978 onwards. That 1978 show was the last for Bernard Delfont who at the age of 69 decided he didn't need the aggravation of organising it any more. The job was passed on to Louis Benjamin while Delfont became Life President for the fund, which by now he had renamed the Variety Artistes Benevolent Fund to cover artistes from all spheres of entertainment.

"Every Royal Variety is controlled chaos" wrote Bernard Delfont. "Just think of it; more than twenty acts and countless ensembles to meld together and less than two days to do it." Timing, Delfont soon discovered was crucial to the success of the show, otherwise the planned two-and-a-half hours can seriously overrun. Once the show starts the producers are very much in the hands of the artistes themselves. The record for overrunning is held by Ken Dodd who came on to do a 12-minute routine but stayed on for forty. There's also the time that Max Miller outstayed his welcome. As he came off the stage Val Parnell stormed at him "you'll never work again in one of my theatres!" To which Max Miller replied, "Val, you're about four hundred thousand pounds too late!"

Many entertainers see the royal performance as the pinnacle of their career and to be invited to appear before royalty is still considered an immense privilege. One of the most famous shows was in 1963 when The Beatles were invited to appear. Delfont had not heard of the group but his daughter was a fan and kept pestering her father to book them. Delfont found out that the group were appearing at one of his bookings at the Princes Theatre, Torquay, so he phoned up the box office to enquire how business was. "We're sold out," said the manager. "There are fans sleeping on the street waiting for returns."  Delfont immediately booked the group for the Royal Variety which was still some months away. As November neared the Beatles phenomenon reached fever pitch and by the time they appeared on the show the group were the biggest names in show business. This upset Marlene Dietrich who was booked on the same bill. The actress thought she should take star billing and whenever photographers gathered to take pictures of the Beatles she would muscle her way in. She even tried to win favour with the orchestra by buying them two crates of champagne. But ultimately she was upstaged by John Lennon who, during the group's performance, made headlines by telling the audience "those of you in the cheaper seats clap your hands" then with a cheeky side-glance to the Royal Box he added, "the rest of you just rattle your jewellery."

Royal protocol was always tested in the show from time to time and although indirect references were made to the royal party they were never pushed too far. And when TV cameras were introduced they were not allowed to film the reaction from the royal box. The Queen, or whoever was in attendance that particular year would be seen arriving at the theatre, taking her or his seat in the royal box, leaving at the end and then being introduced to the performers who stood respectfully in line. Tommy Steele was another performer who extended the limits of acceptability at a Royal Command by asking the audience to clap along to one of his songs. Harmless enough one would have thought, but audience participation had never been a part of a royal show prior to this. It wasn't until the Queen Mother leant forward in her box to lead the way that the audience felt comfortable enough to join in.

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This from Griff:- I expect a lot of our parents smoked cigarettes as the perils of smoking tobacco had not really hit the headlines as being that harmful to health back in the 1950's and 60's. 

             Seeing Peter's advert on the MC web side bar for Craven A cigarettes reminds me of my Mother who would only smoke Craven A cork tipped when she did smoke cigarettes . Like many other people of her day she did give up smoking when the facts of smoking were eventually revealed to the public.

             However what I was thinking when looking at that Craven A advert was the power of advertising  particularly by the mighty powerful tobacco companies.  "Good for your Throat" was the slogan to advertise Craven A cigarettes and the slogan came instantly to my mind all these years later when I saw Peter's advert. I can hear my Mum saying it as well.   Laughable when you think about it and there was even a claim by Craven A that their cigarettes  "soothed sore throats."  I don't think so!  They wouldn't get away with that false advertising slogan nonsense today.

Cheers Everyone... Griff.

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On this day 25^th August 1960-1965

On 25/08/1960 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.

On 25/08/1961 the number one single was You Don't Know - Helen Shapiro 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 were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.The big news story of the day was Burma becomes world's first Buddhist republic.

On 25/08/1962 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 25/08/1963 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 25/08/1964 the number one single was Do Wah Diddy Diddy - Manfred Mann and the number one album was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles. The top rated TV show was Labour 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 25/08/1965 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.

Web Page  No 2186

18^th August 2015

Top Picture: Far Tottering Station

Second Picture: Oyster Creek Station

Third Picture: Rowland Emett and his family by the engine shed and next to ‘Neptune’

 Forth Picture: ‘Wild Swan’ Ready for departure

Fifth Picture: Cartoon of the Railway

The Far Tottering & Oyster Creek Railway

Do you remember the Festival of Britain?, Especially its funfair held in Battersea Park? Well I do and when my Grandmother lived in London I was taken to the fair several times. What most children remember about the fair is the fantasy railway designed by Rowland Emett.

To some, the pleasure gardens at Battersea Park were the Festival of Britain, but the site - in the centre of the park - was actually quite small, measuring no more than a few hundred yards across. The east side was a fairly conventional funfair, with a boating lake, big dipper ride and all the usual sideshows, while the west end was a bit smarter, featuring a fern house, fountains, elegant walkways, restaurants and a theatre. Linking the two areas was Emett’s miniature railway. No ordinary railway, but a creation the likes of which had never been seen before and are very unlikely to be seen again: the Far Tottering & Oyster Creek Railway.

By 1944, the nation needed to escape from grim reality and the fantasy branch lines to Far Twittering and other even stranger places submitted to Punch caught the popular imagination. Emett and Nellie the locomotive become great favourites and amongst them was James Gardner, the designer of the Festival of Britain Pleasure Gardens and he asked Emett to translate the his drawings into a working miniature railway and the stage was set for one of the most extraordinary miniature lines ever created.

Emett was put in touch with Harry Barlow, a councillor and businessman from Southport, whose company S & B Miniature Railways Ltd had built a miniature railway line at Alexandra Palace in 1950. It was decided that steam would have been impractical so it was decided to use internal combustion engines as the power plants and to use ex-army generators which were plentiful, cheap as the power plant.

Three different locomotives were built from Emett’s designs; Nellie, 'Neptune' and 'Wild Goose'.

Sadly there seems to have been no attempt to record the construction of the line, even its length of the line was debatable, being variously put at 500 yards or a third of a mile, but it was probably a little longer.

In total, more than eight million people visited the Pleasure Gardens during the Festival and one in four visitors to Battersea took a ride to Far Tottering. Trains were of four to eight carriages, each seating at least 12, and there were three trains running at busy times. Thus the railway handled 1000 visitors an hour and it was at full capacity for much of the summer and the platforms were known as 'Coming' and 'Going',  A very cheerful Barlow claimed to have recouped his investment by week three, giving him a handsome return on this gamble, the railway reopened in early 1952 and ran throughout the summer, after the official closure of the Festival and proved to be a financial success.

All went well until Wednesday 11^th July 1951 when two full trains entered the same section of track and collided just outside Oyster Creek station. In the resulting crash one woman was killed and a further 12 passengers injured. Today, the railway would probably have been closed for good, but ‘Neptune’, was soon operating a safe single-train service, and once ‘Nellie’ and ‘WiId Goose’ had been repaired it was business as usual. No formal enquiry was held, and the coroner's inquest produced a verdict of accidental death.

But what happened to the Emett railway? Harold Barlow rebuilt the locomotives  to look like the record holder ‘Mallard’ renamed them, Nellie becoming 'Princess Anne', Neptune 'Princess Margaret Rose', and Wild Goose 'Prince Charles'. After the closure of the Festival the track was lifted and relaid on the other side of the Park. The railway staggering to 1975 then closed. Princess Anne and Princess Margaret Rose were moved to Shanklin destined for the short-lived Medina Valley line and both were subsequently scrapped in the early 1980s. Wild Goose, nee Prince Charles, fared better, and today is the sole survivor is owned by Austin Moss and resides at the Windmill Farm Railway in Lancashire.

.

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On this day 18^th August 1960-1965

On 18/08/1960 the number one single was Please Don't Tease - Cliff Richard & 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.

On 18/08/1961 the number one single was You Don't Know - Helen Shapiro and the number one album was Black & White Minstrel Show - George Mitchell Minstrels. The top rated TV show was Harpers West One (ATV) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Ipswich were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.

On 18/08/1962 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 18/08/1963 the number one single was Sweets For My Sweet - Searchers 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 18/08/1964 the number one single was Do Wah Diddy Diddy - Manfred Mann 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 18/08/1965 the number one single was Help - The Beatles and the number one album was Liverpool. 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 were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions. Watts race riots in US and the big news story of the day was Riviera Police (AR)

Web Page  No 2184

11^th August 2015

Top Picture:                      Richard Wattis

Second Picture: Richard Wattis and Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques

Third Picture:  Harry Worth

Richard Wattis

Richard Cameron Wattis was one of that band of also ran actors and actresses who seemed to appear in practically everything in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s but ever made the big time.

A balding, bespectacled, bird-like British actor, he was an invaluable asset to any UK comedy film or TV programme for nearly thirty years. He was often seen in officious roles, such as snooty shop managers, secretaries and policemen. The difference was that, instead of playing them as frustrated and bumbling, he was drily cynical and always sharp.

Several years ago a fellow actor described Richard Wattis’s normal character part as follows:- “ He was the man who always began a sentence with a bored look and a rather disinterested “Can I help you? Sir”, he would listen to you explain your predicament and then frustrate you with an equally dispassionate “ I’m awfully sorry, Sir but there is absolutely nothing I can do to help you.” He was the man who would look down his nose at you, through his distinctive glasses, with an air of superiority and dismissiveness in the safe knowledge that whatever he said it would make no difference as the sluggish wheels of bureaucracy would always turn very slowly in his favour.”

He was born on 25th February 1912 in Wednesbury, Staffordshire and attended King Edward's School and Bromsgrove School, after which he worked for the electrical engineering firm William Sanders & Co (Wednesbury) Ltd. His uncle, William Preston (1874–1941), was the managing director of this company and he was also the Conservative Member of Parliament for Walsall for five years from 1924 until 1929.

After a time Richard left the family business and he became an actor making  his debut was with the  Croydon Repertory Theatre. His progressed and his first appearance in a film was in  A Yank at Oxford (1938), but war service interrupted his career as an actor. He served as a second lieutenant with the Arms Section of Special Operations Executive at Station VI during World War II.

After the war he returned to acting and became best known for his appearances in British comedies of the 1950s and 1960s, typically as the "Man from the Ministry" or similar type of character, with his trademark thick-rimmed round spectacles.

Such appearances included the St Trinian's films (The Belles of St Trinian's, Blue Murder at St Trinian's, and The Great St Trinian's Train Robbery) as Manton Bassett, a civil servant who was the Deputy Director of Schools in the Ministry of Education, where he was often seen frowning and expressing indignation at the outrageous behaviour of other characters. To American audiences, Richard Wattis was probably best known for his performance as the British civil servant Northbrook in The Prince and the Showgirl (1957).

In fact he appeared in almost eighty films during his career. Most of us would know him from his appearances on television, including a long-running role as Mr Brown, the harassed, but snooty, next door neighbour in Sykes. He also appeared in episodes of  Danger Man, The Prisoner, The Goodies, Hancock's Half Hour, and Father, Dear Father. From 1957 to 1958, he was in demand in the United States as the typical Englishman and appeared as Peter Jamison in three episodes of the American sitcom Dick and the Duchess.

Richard Wattis appeared alongside Harry Worth in Anyone for Golf where he played a gardener living next to a golf course having to contend with Harry Worth after he had played his ball into his garden.

He appeared in many theatrical productions but one of the most unusual being when he appeared, again with Harry Worth where he played Po Bah in a 1969 BBC version of TiTiPu, a version of the Gilbert and Sullivan classic The Mikado.

Richard Wattis was homosexual during a period when this was frowned upon and criminalised.

On 1st February 1975, he died of a heart attack in a restaurant in Kensington, London. He was just 62 years old. His Memorial Service was held at the actors church, St Paul’s in Covent Garden and a small residential development, Richard Wattis Drive is named in his honour in his home town of Wednesbury

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On this day 11^th August 1960-1965

On 11/08/1960 the number one single was Shakin' All Over - Johnny Kidd & the Pirates 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.

On 11/08/1961 the number one single was You Don't Know - Helen Shapiro and the number one album was Black & White Minstrel Show - George Mitchell Minstrels. The top rated TV show was Top Secret (AR) and the box office smash was One Hundred and One Dalmations. A pound of today's money was worth £13.25 and Ipswich were on the way to becoming the Season's Division 1 champions.The big news story of the day was Britain applies to join EEC.

On 11/08/1962 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 11/08/1963 the number one single was Sweets For My Sweet - Searchers 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 11/08/1964 the number one single was A Hard Day's Night - Beatles 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 11/08/1965 the number one single was Help - The Beatles and the number one album was The Sound of Music Soundtrack. The top rated TV show was Riviera Police (AR) 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.