1976: Summer of Nostalgia

Part One: Television

Here in the twenty first century, television nostaglia has become a mini industry. There are several television channels whose output consists entirely of vintage programmes and films, and still more material to be found on YouTube. Fifty years ago, the phenomenon barely existed, except in the minds of a few individuals like myself and my friend Tim Beddows. Indeed, we first came together over a shared interest in ‘vintage’ TV programmes which at the time weren’t even a decade old. Imagine some fifteen-year-old of 2026 getting excited about the prospect of seeing a TV series from 2017. It just wouldn’t happen.

Part of the reason for this is the degree to which content has become accessible to the general public. There’s barely a title from TV or film that can’t be found with a quick online search, whether the result directs you to a physical media release, streaming service or illegal upload. Back in 1976, the idea that so much archival content should be so easily accessible was inconceivable. With only three TV networks, broadcasting time was limited, and contemporary programming occupied the bulk of the programme schedules. Until 1972, the usual place to find repeat broadcasts of series like The Saint or The Avengers was late at night, around 11pm, with Sunday lunchtimes offering another limited window of opportunity. In October of 1972, however, the government lifted restrictions on broadcasting hours, allowing the BBC and ITV to show programmes in the afternoon. ITV were quick to take advantage of this, and a new weekday afternoon schedule appeared, with hour-long slots devoted to repeat broadcasts. That very first week of afternoon programming ushered in repeat runs for A Family at War (Tuesday) and The Saint (Wednesday), with Simon Templar’s adventures being seen across several different ITV regions.

As time wore on, more and more of the old ITC series began to pop up in the afternoons, but what you got to see depended on where you lived, making for a veritable postcode lottery of archive television. Viewers in Wales might be treated to a repeat run of Danger Man, whilst in the Midlands we got Strange Report. This was clearly not enough for some viewers, and while hour-long dramas were often repeated, the same did not apply to sitcoms and variety shows, which rarely resurfaced after their original broadcasts. In early 1976, and probably reflecting a nationwide trend, the Birmingham Evening Mail encouraged readers to write in with their memories of vintage television, nominating those series they would most like to see again. The resulting correspondence was shown to executives at the local ITV station, who sanctioned a run of primetime repeats to be shown on Saturday evenings during late spring and early summer. The resulting season, given the umbrella title of ‘Play it Again’ comprised only American drama series, repeats of British material being restricted by agreements with the actors’ union Equity. Nevertheless, the season proved popular enough for the idea to be extended to the whole of the ITV network with a series of repeats appearing from late June under the title ‘Command Performance’, and beginning with a vintage edition of 77 Sunset Strip (above).

Viewers in the ATV region got to see two episodes of 77 Sunset Strip within days of each other – The Bouncing Chip (above) as part of the 'Play it Again' strand and The Cookie Caper three days later. The film print of the latter later found its way into Tim Beddows' film collection.

The series has never been seen since in the UK.

Similar archival seasons had been shown by the BBC in the late 60s, with strands such as Star Choice presenting repeat episodes from well loved series like Softly, Softly, chosen by members of the cast, but on the whole contemporary television tended to avoid repeats. For every viewer who wrote in asking to see an old series again, there were probably ten who complained about the number of repeats. In fact, the BBC did a poor job of repeating its series, with many popular dramas like The Troubleshooters and Doomwatch clocking up just a single broadcast. Doctor Who was repeated only in exceptional circumstances, such as the show’s annual summer break, and most of its serials were seen only once.

I’d been aware of the afternoon repeats of Danger Man and others since around 1973 when I chanced upon an episode of that particular series during the school holidays. I was more interested in repeats of Gerry Anderson’s series, which from 1973 onwards became a fixture of summer holiday mornings. Then, in March 1976, our local ITV station, ATV, began a Sunday afternoon repeat run of Strange Report, a series of which I had some vague memories from its original broadcast back in 1979. Only three episodes appeared before the schedule was rejigged, and the rest of the series was shown piecemeal over the coming months, eventually finding a temporary home on Tuesday afternoons. It was this series more than any other that really kickstarted my own interest in old television series, and the coming autumn would provide still more nostalgia fodder in the shape of Patrick McGoohan’s iconic series The Prisoner.

That 1976 repeat run of The Prisoner was a pivotal moment in archive television appreciation, because the subsequent fan club brought together individuals whose interests also embraced other items of vintage broadcasting. At around the same time, Doctor Who fans were similarly getting their act together.

Even before this happened, the BBC opened up its own TV archives in the summer of 1976 for their ‘Festival 40’ season of repeats, about which I’ve written elsewhere. This provided rare chances to see Steptoe and Son, Hancock, Dr. Finlay’s Casebook and an episode of Z Cars that recently resurfaced on Talking Pictures TV (its first sighting in fifty years). What I learned from watching these old series was that there was more to archive television than mere nostalgia. These old programmes were well written, imaginative, and featured some great performances from actors who had gone on to become household names. Production values had, of course, advanced considerably, and programmes from only a decade ago were already showing their age. No matter. In many cases, they were superior to their contemporary equivalents.

Even with the gradual opening up of the archives, fans of old television still had their work cut out getting to see those old programmes. Tim Beddows resorted to buying old 16mm prints of series like Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased), exactly the kind of collecting activity that later saw film buff Bob Monkhouse hauled through the courts. Extraordinary as it now seems, it was technically illegal even to own film prints of old TV series, never mind whether you were able to profit from them commercially. Compare that to the ‘Wild West’ situation that still prevails on YouTube, where entire channels are comprised of content uploaded without the copyright holders’ consent.

I was going to say we’ve come a long way in fifty years, but in fact the last few years have seen some major setbacks as several dedicated archive TV labels were forced to close. It’s to be hoped that this situation can be reversed: there is already a growing trend back towards physical media as users grow jaded with streaming services (and their endless, excessive commercials), and CD sales are beginning to pick up again. Will the same thing happen with DVD?

There’s an irony to all this, though: because access to content ultimately works against nostalgia, a phenomenon which thrives on memory and loss. If everything from the archives was instantly available to watch, would people care any more? After all, The Prisoner Appreciation Society came together to campaign for repeats of the series. If we’d had YouTube back then, would anyone have bothered? Equally, it’s one thing to feel a warm glow of nostalgia for a TV series you haven’t seen in years, and something else entirely when all the episodes become available on DVD or online. Because not all of those rose tinted memories stand up to scrutiny today…

‘Play it Again’ has probably been forgotten by those of us old enough to have seen it, and as a purely American season it had limited value. Its significance lies in the fact that, for the first time, a broadcaster had acknowledged the demand for repeats of vintage material, and responded in kind. TV nostalgia had arrived.

Summer of 76

Some years are defined by the weather. I still remember grown ups reminscing about the ferociously cold winters of 1947 and 1963. I’d been alive for the latter, but was too young to remember it. Summer heatwaves came and went, but none seemed to outstay its welcome. The memorably hot summer of 1959 was eighteen months too early for me, and the 1960s saw a run of rainy summers punctuated with violent thunderstorms. But the mid 70s would bring one of the best remembered and most talked about years in British meterological history...

The first prolonged hot summer I remember was 1975. Indeed, if it hadn’t been trumped by the following year’s events, we’d still be talking about it today. After a cold and mostly dry spring with snowfall at Easter, a high pressure area settled over the UK in late June, bringing warm weather to most parts. The hot weather continued into July, interrupted by thundery outbreaks, one of which gave me my first sight of golfball-sized hail. August saw a similar pattern. The autumn and winter, however, were notably dry – the period from October to December was the driest over England and Wales since 1879. The below average rainfall continued into early 1976, and by early spring, much of the country was already in a drought situation. The prolonged dry spell was so alarming that the BBC put out a Horizon Special at the end of May – some weeks before the really hot weather took hold. Weather presenter Jack Scott topped and tailed the programme, ending on a long range forecast for the period up to the middle of June. Even then, the Met Office was using computers (albeit of the analogue and tickertape variety), but the equipment at their Bracknell headquarters could only project thirty days ahead. The forecast was for average rainfall in June; but apart from north west Scotland, all areas would see below average rainfall, with a few places recording monthly totals of less than 0.5mm. The weathermen had got it wrong. July was drier still, the driest since 1955, and August was largely the same. The prolonged hot and dry spell came to an end in September, which the Met Office Monthly Weather Report summed up as ‘mostly very wet’. So much for the statistics: but what was the summer of 1976 really like?

As I remember it, the dry, sunny weather seemed unremarkable at first. It was summer, after all, and one expected at least a few sunny days. We were taking end of year exams at school, and the heat didn’t help: we were given permission to take off our blazers. It wasn’t until a few weeks into the hot spell that anyone began to really remark on the conditions, and items began to pop up on the news and in the press. One of the first phenomena that grabbed people’s attention was the swarms of ladybirds that plagued parts of the country, notably at the seaside where one normally didn’t encounter the creatures in such numbers. The insects had abandoned the parched countryside in search of food and water elsewhere.

Seen in retrospect, and as presented on TV documentaries, it’s easy to imagine that no rain fell at all during the months of June, July and August, and that bright blue skies held sway for the whole time. Neither description is wholly accurate. We took our family holiday in mid July, and although the weather was hot and sunny on arrival at our rented cottage on the mid Wales coast, there was prolonged and heavy rain on two days during the week. As for those blue skies, if you want to see the reality, you can find it in episodes of The Sweeney (series three) shot during that summer. After a few weeks of the endless hot, dry weather, a haze of dust and pollutants had developed, lending a diffuse, milky quality to the sunlight, especially in urban areas. Rather than brilliant azure, the summer sky was more of a misty blue, certainly by late August when I well remember the hot, hazy dusty conditions during a trip into Birmingham.

No documentary about the summer of 1976 is complete without the obligatory film of housewives queueing up to draw water from standpipes. In certain areas where supplies were dwindling, the water companies reduced mains pressure so that the supply wouldn’t reach homes, but could be accessed from the street. This, of course, was the reality for people in the affected areas, but we saw nothing like that in the midlands where the water supply came largely from reservoirs in the Elan Valley in mid Wales – an area with very high rainfall (as we discovered on our holiday). I do, however, remember talk of hosepipe bans, and water saving tips in the media, such as the often repeated suggestion that couples should share a bath. Well, it was the 1970s after all… In our house, we recycled bath water for use on the garden.

The government’s save water campaign was fronted by Brummie Dennis Howell, MP for Birmingham Small Heath – ironic, in light of the fact that Birmingham was one of the areas least affected by the drought. Officially dubbed ‘minister for drought’, a dubious online story (originated as late as 2012 in the Birmingham Mail) claims he was ‘ordered by No.10 to do a rain dance on behalf of the nation’. I well remember Howell’s chubby face and avuncular manner – he seemed to be on the national news most nights – but the rain dance story is nonsense, a typical online misconstruction of an idea that had occurred to most wags back in the day. What is true is that, when the hot weather finally broke and heavy rainfall ensued, he was instantly dubbed ‘Minister for Floods’.

The hot weather didn’t make much difference to me, as I wasn’t really the outdoor type, and didn’t go in for sports or al fresco recreation of any kind. Indeed, I spent quite a lot of that summer indoors watching television – repeats of Gerry Anderson’s Stingray, and the ITC series Strange Report. It was, as I’ve written elsewhere, a notable summer for vintage television, with seasons of repeats on both ITV and BBC. Perhaps in an effort to counter all this, our mum bought a badminton set – complete with net – that was set up in the back garden and provided some alternative entertainment for the summer months.

Nothing captures the feeling of a moment in time like the pop charts of the era, and for me, the essence of Summer ‘76 is to be found in singles like Peter Frampton’s ‘Show Me the Way’ (number 10 on 19 June), The Isley Brothers’ ‘Harvest for the World’ (number 10 in early August), Wings’ ‘Let ‘Em in’ (number 2 in late August), and Manfred Mann’s Earthband’s ‘Blinded by the Light’.

There was, of course, rather more to the summer of 1976 than a British heatwave: America was celebrating its bicentennial in July, and the BBC marked the occasion with a season of programmes (more on that story next time). Further afield – on Mars, to be exact – NASA had just landed its Viking 1 mission, whose images were being beamed back to Earth in late July – I remember seeing them on the tiny portable television in our holiday cottage. In London, the punk rock scene was just getting off the ground, but would only really come to national prominence later in the year in the wake of the Sex Pistols’ notorious TV appearance with Bill Grundy. In July, David Steel was elected the new leader of the Liberal Party; Ford launched its new small hatchback the Fiesta; and the work of forger Tom Keating was exposed in a series of articles in the Times. As the drought continued into August, former MP John Stonehouse, who had famously ‘done a Reggie Perrin’ two years earlier, was sentenced to seven years in jail for fraud, and the month ended in riots at the heavily policed Notting Hill Carnival.

Today, with the issue of climate change so much in the media spotlight, it’s easy to look back at the summer of 1976 as a foretaste of things to come. Yet even then, scientists were wondering if the freak weather was a random occurence or an early indicator of long term climate change (a few years before, the big worry had been a new ice age). The weather of 1975-6, both here in Britain and across large swathes of the planet, strongly suggested that all was not as it should be, and some observers cautioned that we might be in for a run of hot, dry summers. 1977 put paid to that idea: the summer was mostly dull, cool and wet. And while today the warming trend is undeniable – all five of the warmest UK summers having occurred since the year 2000 – prolonged heatwaves and drought still aren’t inevitable, and next year could easily be cool and rainy. There’s still no reliable way of knowing. The Met Office computers of 1976 could ‘only’ predict trends up to thirty days ahead, and even then with no guarantee of accuracy. Yet fifty years later, with advanced modelling tools available, the long range forecast still isn’t very much better. Will this coming summer be a repeat run of 1976? I'm all for repeats when it's old television, but I draw the line at heatwaves...

The DNA of Frozen Orange Juice

 

As someone who writes songs as a hobby, I’ve always been interested in what one might call the DNA of pop music: what it is that makes certain songs appealing, others annoying. Perhaps the best exponent of this type of pop song analysis is record producer and YouTuber Rick Beato, whose videos explain, in musical terms, exactly why songs by artists like the Beatles sound the way they do. Songwriting will almost certainly never be reduced to an exact science, and it will be a black day for the music industry if it ever is. Artificial Intelligence thinks it can write songs, but all it really does is act as a kind of food processor, mixing ingredients from other sources and ending up with a kind of generic slop. Songwriters rely on instinct and inspiration, two qualities which AI will never achieve if it lasts a thousand years.

With a little musical knowledge and insight, it is, nevertheless, possible to isolate elements in specific songs that add to their character and appeal, and I’ve just recently done this with Peter Sarstedt’s 1969 chart hit ‘Frozen Orange Juice’. Why that particular song? Well, a track I was working on put me in mind of it. It was a song I’d written a long time ago and had only just got round to recording. I’d never noticed any similarity between this song and ‘Frozen Orange Juice’, but when I was listening to the playback I was reminded of it. Was it the melody, the chords? This all set me to thinking about the musical components of ‘Frozen Orange Juice’, and wondering exactly what it was about the song that made it special.

‘Frozen Orange Juice’ has a very simple structure: there is no verse/chorus as such, just two 8-bar sections. The first eight bars state the main melody, in the home key of F major: ‘I’ll buy you one more frozen orange juice/ on this fantastic day’. The second eight bars modulate to B flat major: ‘And if you feel you wanna run down a ravine…’ This second section occurs again as the refrain ‘you rescue me, I’ll rescue you’. There are three verses, a la-la instrumental verse and three bridge sections. That’s all there is to it.

The arrangement adds interest and variety, with strings and woodwind restating the main theme, and a pedal steel guitar adding some soaring, sliding notes. The lyrics are happily optimistic, but there’s also a hint of sadness, of parting, as in the last verse the narrator states ‘I’ll be on my way’. It’s this subtle melancholy that is the key to the song’s appeal, and it all hinges on one specific note in the melody that occurs on the first syllable of ‘frozen’. It’s a fourth above the home key of F major, and fourths are a funny thing in music. AI (dare I admit it) says that the perfect fourth ‘evokes a sense of reaching or longing’, which is exactly what Sarstedt is aiming for in his composition. The narrator knows very well that ‘this fantastic day’ won’t last forever and that by tomorrow morning it will be simply a happy memory.

The main melody climbs to the fourth and then backs down again, just like the characters in the song walking ‘the sunny hills of Madrid’. Sarstedt only hits one higher note in the whole song, the high B flat of ‘if you wanna run’… and from this musical high point, the melody again does exactly what the lyrics describe, and runs downhill. If instead of stopping at the fourth, the melody had risen to the fifth note of the scale, or higher, the sense of longing would have been diminished. In the final verse, the melody hits the fourth again when the lyrics reach ‘on my way’, again reinforcing the underlying sadness.

It doesn’t really matter whether Sarstedt did all this by design or instinct (I suspect the latter). It’s that ‘yearning’ fourth that adds the sense of happy/sadness that I think he was aiming for. The song sounds joyously optimistic, but there’s also the tug of nostalgia for good times past. It’s interesting to note some of the comments posted on one of the YouTube uploads of the track: ‘a sound of sunshine, freedom and joy’; ‘smiles all round’; ‘reminds me of long hot summers’. For me, it has always evoked the brilliant blue sky of a summer day, seen from my parents’ back garden, and, simultaneously, the landscape described in the lyrics. It’s a song of bright blue and brilliant yellow, and the key of F major conveys the warmth of the sunny hills around Madrid.

‘Frozen Orange Juice’ spent nine weeks in the UK charts, entering at number 50 on 10 June 1969, and making its last appearance at number 30 on the week of 2 August. Its highest position was number 10, for one week on 7 July – perfect timing, for the release coincided with a spell of warm sunny weather which almost certainly helped it up the charts.

Curiously, though, it was quite unlike Sarstedt’s huge hit of earlier the same year, ‘Where Do You Go to (My Lovely)’, which had reached number one with its folk club sound, Parisian accordion and enigmatic lyrics. ‘Frozen Orange Juice’ by contrast, sounds more like a pop record, with its full band and orchestration. Production was by Ray Singer, with an arrangement by Ian Green. Singer had allegedly discovered Sarstedt busking in Paris, although this sounds like the kind of story that’s often invented for PR purposes – Sarstedt, lest we forget, came from a musical family and his brother had scored hits earlier in the decade as Eden Kane. Singer’s later production work included David Sylvian and Japan. Ian Green had also arranged the minimalist backing on ‘Where Do You Go To’ and his work was heard on singles from Edison Lighthouse (‘Love Grows’) and Thunderclap Newman (‘Something in the Air’), which is no mean track record and gives an indication of his versatility.

The real underlying sadness behind ‘Frozen Orange Juice’ is that it would be Peter Sarstedt’s chart swansong, and though he would continue to release singles until 1978, none would ever repeat the spectacular success of 1969. In a way, the song feels almost prophetic: as Sarstedt’s narrator realises, that ‘fantastic day’ in the sun simply couldn’t last.

I thought it was worth sharing this silly sleeve which makes an ice lolly out of Sarstedt

In the Footsteps of the Beatles

 

You know at once that you’ve come to the right place: there’s a surprising amount of people waiting to cross the road, while others are milling around on the pavement looking into the forecourt of the iconic building where history was made. The zebra crossing is iconic (and surprising to find it so close to a road junction). The building itself would go unnoticed if we didn't know its history. This, of course is Abbey Road Studios.

Walking past the crowds, I strolled in through the open gates unchallenged, and up the famous front steps. Unlike the tourists, I had a pass in my pocket, allowing me entry to the studio on a set date. And once inside, I was free to roam around at will. The reason for my visit was to attend a recording session by my brother’s jazz outfit, The Pete Cater Big Band, who were recording in Studio 2 – the room made famous by the Beatles.

Passing through the smart reception area, one enters an inner corridor. A stairway on the right, its walls lined with photographs of the many famous names who have recorded here, takes you down to the lower floor. Almost immediately opposite as you come down the stairs is the door to Studio One, which happened to be standing open. I had a look inside. The space is large and impressive, yet vaguely reminiscent of the assembly hall at my old grammar school: high ceilings, parquet floor, a nice art deco staircase, acoustic baffles on the walls. 

On the other side of the corridor, a short passage leads you to a set of double doors. There are further doors within, heavily soundproofed, which look to have been there a long time. Through these doors and you’re in Studio 2.

Studio 2 as seen from the stairs to the control room

Very little has changed in the sixty four years since the Beatles first stepped in here – the parquet floor is the same, and the acoustic screening, white panels covered in hundreds of tiny slits is still in place, still bolted into position using the same brackets that can be seen on countless historic photographs. It’s a large room, but the proportions aren’t intimidating: around 60 feet long by 38 feet wide, with a 24 foot high ceiling. By contrast, Studio One (the largest purpose built recording studio in the world) measures a whopping 94x58 feet at its maximum dimensions, with a 40 foot high ceiling.

Today, the studio has been set up for a large jazz group to record: one area has been turned into an isolation booth for a bass guitar player, using the same moveable acoustic screens that were once set up around Ringo’s drums during Beatle sessions. Smaller acoustic panels, with windows, separate the brass section from the area where the drums are set up. These look like more recent additions, but the padded wall hangings look very much like those that can be seen in shots of the Beatles at work back in 1963.

As you enter, the stairway up to the control room is on your immediate right. Up these same wooden steps the ‘boys’ would have clattered when invited by George Martin to hear a playback. As you ascend, you’re aware of an an antique, musty smell, redolent of wax floor polish, dust… and Beatle sweat?

The control room, is of course, completely modernised, save for the window looking down into the studio. A modern digital desk measuring around 12 feet across occupies one side of the room. It’s by no means brand new: the padded leather front is showing signs of age. Two flat screen monitors give a video feed of what’s happening downstairs, and a centre screen displays the virtual mixing desk of the Pro Tools music software that’s now used here. The walls are lined with bright red acoustic panels, and an array of speakers stand behind the desk.

Back down in the studio, I notice an old Steinway upright standing in a corner. Is this one of the pianos used by the Beatles? It certainly sounds like it: when I play a few chords, it gives out a very familiar tone, bright and percussive. It’s been set up as a tack piano or ‘jangle box’, with brass tacks (literally drawing pins) pressed into the hammers to produce a sharper sound when they strike the strings. Further down the room, there’s a large grand piano, and a more modern example has been set up for the band to use, alongside a vintage Rhodes electric piano (not an instrument with Beatle provenance – they used a humble Hohner Pianet).

I sit in the control room as the band runs through various numbers, repeating certain sections to be edited in later. This in itself is impressive, for these guys are pro musicians sight reading parts that they’ve maybe never played before. There’s discussion between the band and the guys in the control room: ‘we’ll go from bar 107’. And they hit it every time, note perfect.

During a break, we go out into the small garden where the Beatles posed with their instruments during the recording session for 'She Loves You' almost sixty three years ago to to day. I think twice about depositing a banana skin in the flower bed: this is hallowed ground. Fortunately, there's a bin provided.

We’re lucky that the studio still exists at all. In 2010, with then owners EMI facing increasing debts, there were rumours about the building being put up for sale and even redeveloped into luxury flats. Horrific though this prospect was, it would in fact have been a reversion to an earlier era, for the Georgian townhouse had previously been converted into flats prior to its acqusition by the Gramophone Company in 1929. Fortunately, the bulding was granted Grade II listed status in 2010, preserving it and preventing major alterations from taking place. The pedestrian crossing is simlarly Grade II listed. I was a little worried for its safety when I arrived, as a gang of workmen were tearing up the road just yards away...

Abbey Road Studios is, without a doubt, one of the most famous recording facilities in the world, and looks to be in rude health from what I could see. As we brought some of my brother’s drums back to his car, some sightseers on the other side of the railings asked ‘have you been recording in there?’ and were suitably impressed when they learned that this was indeed the case. Even as we were leaving, the pedestrian crossing was still heaving with tourists waiting their turn to re-create that famous album sleeve. But we’d gone further, as deep into the recorded history of the Fab Four as it is possible to go.

My thanks to Pete Cater and everyone at Abbey Road Studios who made this visit possible.

Ten Years in Old Money

14 June 2026, appropriately enough, is a Sunday. Because today marks the 10th anniversary of this blog. In that time, I’ve posted more than 250 different essays, all sharing a common theme of nostalgia and memory, and amassed 1.47Gb of material in the folder I’ve set aside for this project. My first post was subtitled ‘childhood encounters with popular culture, 1961-79’, but over the years, I’ve occasionally drifted away from that original intention. I began writing this blog for myself, preserving memories while they’re still accessible. In doing so, I discovered that the most potent form of nostalgia comes from contextualisation. Mention of an old comic, piece of music or television series in isolation is all well and good, but when it’s placed within the wider cultural landscape in which it emerged, one gets a much keener appreciation of how it felt to be around during those times.

Beginning with my own diaries, I’ve drawn on sources including TV listings, pop charts and even weather records in an effort to recapture specific moments in time. In doing so, I’ve unearthed memories that I’d actually forgotten, and this is where context becomes critical. Hearing an old record may give you a hit of nostalgia, but when you hear an entire chart from say fifty years ago you begin to sense other things – like where you were and what you were doing, even what the weather was like (which is why I so often refer back to Met Office records). Place that pop chart alongside the TV listings for the same week, and still more memories begin to emerge by association. It’s the nostalgia equivalent of placing two pieces of plutonium next to one another – a chain reaction of memory. Probably the bext example of this can be found in my entry from March 2017, “Daydream – a Time Detective Story” wherein I described how I’d taken a random memory and found a precise date for it. In the course of writing the item, I went from a vague memory of a random moment in time to a much clearer picture of an entire Saturday back in April 1970. If you didn’t read it at the time, you can find it here:

https://sundayinoldmoney.blogspot.com/2017/03/daydream-time-detective-story.html

There may come a time when my own memory begins to fade, so having all this written down is something I’m doing for my own benefit (I’m compiling a document of similar recollections which currently stands at nearly 50,000 words over 110 pages). By the same token, perhaps as memory begins to break down, these distant moments will come into sharper focus and clarity. Maybe that’s already happening. There’s no way of knowing. Sunday in Old Money is, in this respect, a kind of fall-out shelter of memory, a place where moments like this can be preserved. It will almost certainly outlast me, and if it serves any purpose at all outside of being a repository of my own personal recollections, then it might, in future, be the equivalent of a researcher stumbling across a vintage diary. Never mind those TV nostalgia programmes – this is how it really felt to be around in the 1960s and 70s.

I’ve never set out to be an ‘influencer’ (however one even achieves such a thing), but I did wonder a few months back whether this blog might have played a small part in the BBC’s resurrection of their Laurel and Hardy Omnibus documentary of 1974, which I’d mentioned in a posting at Christmas last year, drawing attention to the fact that it had remained unshown since 1976. Just a couple of months later, it turned up, to mark the 60 anniversary of Stan Laurel’s passing. Coincidence or not? It doesn’t matter, as long as items like this aren’t left to gather dust in the archives forever.

When I first set up the blog, I must have checked a box requiring moderation, ie. approval of any comments, purely as a means to weed out the bots and spammers that I’ve seen populating other blogs. Originally, blogger would send emails notifying me if anyone had posted a comment, but in recent years this has stopped happening, for reasons unknown. Recently, in response to a reader who’d been trying to post a comment without it appearing, I had a look at the dashboard and realised that there was a folder in the sidebar containing a collection of comments pending approval. Astonishingly, these went back as far as 2017. There weren’t many – perhaps less than twenty in all – but they were all useful, well-meant, appreciative and relevant: not a spammer amongst them. In several cases, I would like to have been able to reply at the time the comments appeared, and I apologise to anyone who has posted here in hope of a reply and felt they’d been ignored. This was certainly never the intention, and comments are always welcome.

Over the years, I’ve been aware of maybe a handful of regular readers, some of whom I know personally, but the blog’s dashboard tells a slightly different story. Most entries are read maybe twenty or thirty times, but that figure spikes noticeably wherever I’ve written about archive television of a certain stripe – namely, the action/adventure series of ITC and any kind of Gerry Anderson content. The post that attracted the most comments was ‘The Afterlife of ITC’, originally posted on Friday 2 July 2021, following the announcement of the death of The Champions star Stuart Damon. These, along with all the other comments in the ‘pending’ file, are now available to read. Looking at the global map that Blogger provides, I see a surprising amount of engagement from the far east, all of which I presume to be bots and other content scrapers. The next highest readership is from the USA, which is also suspect, as the content I write about is, for the most part, very British. Taking account of all this spurious engagement, I’d estimate the number of genuine readers to be around a hundred. A recent post (which was shared on a number of online forums) clocked up 73 views in its first few days online, while the blog itself supposedly was viewed 1000 times during the same period, with bots most likely accounting for the bulk of those. Even so, it’s reaching a few more people than I originally envisaged.

I started Sunday in Old Money essentially as an attempt to set down how it felt to have encountered some of the icons of popular culture before they’d acquired their iconic status, and the very first post looked back at ‘Bat-Year 1966’, a veritable annual mirabilis of pop culture that brought us the Batman TV series, a second crop of Thunderbirds, Action Man, and a lot more besides. My recollection of that year is as clear now as it was when I wrote the blog, but it’s staggering to realise that those memories have now receded another decade into history. I also hoped that the blog would reach readers of a similar age and demographic who would recognise or relate to some of the subject matter. I know that one or two readers have helped to promote Sunday in Old Money online – my thanks if you’re one of them, and either way, please feel at liberty to post links to any of my posts wherever you think they may find kindred spirits.

When I started this blog, I was writing it in my spare time between holding down a full-time job (albeit one in which I worked from home 100% of the time). You can see from the right hand column those years when I had more to do and less time to devote to blogging – 2019 and 2022 were, for whatever reason, particularly busy times. On the other hand, since my job came to an end, writing these entries has often been the only thing I’ve had to do on a given day, and their number has shot up (2024’s tally of 60 having been ‘artificially’ increased by a ‘twelve days of Christmas’ series). As long as I can find subjects to write about, I will continue to do so. If it provides interest or entertainment to anyone else, that’s a bonus. 

Thanks for reading!

Back Home

 

Even for someone with no interest in football, it could be hard to ignore the World Cup whenever it rolled around on its four year cycle. Somehow, I’d managed to avoid it in 1966. Our dad never followed football, so it was simply never talked about in our house. I’d started school that same year, but the final was played on 30 July, after we’d have broken up for the school holidays, so I couldn’t even pick up on the excitement of England’s win from playground chatter. I have only the dimmest recollections of the tournament: seeing the Blue Peter presenters adding the commemorative stamps to their album, and a few glimpses of England mascot ‘World Cup Willie’ who appeared on keyrings and other promotional items.

It was quite different in 1970. This time, with England as the reigning world champions, there was a palpable buzz in the media. By now, I was nine years old, and had been playing football at school (admittedly with no real enthusiasm) since the previous autumn. I’d chosen my blue jersey because it looked like the one worn by Mr. Spock in Star Trek, so you can see where I was coming from. My school friends thought the blue top meant I supported Everton, but I’d never heard of such a place...

In fact, it was my brother, two years younger than myself, who began to take an interest in soccer, and (he’ll probably correct me here) I’m sure that the 1970 World Cup had a lot to do with it. He had, in fact, been collecting stickers of UK team players issued by Panini the previous year, and now a new set appeared featuring all the teams in the international tournament. As collectable items, I took a passing interest in these, but was never quite won over. I was too busy trying to complete my set of Star Trek bubble gum cards…

Other collectables quickly began to appear. Esso petrol stations got in early with their set of commemorative coins. Around the size of a shilling piece, these featured portraits of the England squad, and a single coin (wrapped in paper) was given away with every four gallons of petrol. The promotion was already well advanced by early May, when press advertisements advised collectors that they still had time to complete their sets of coins. Coins could be mounted in a display card, which looked suitably impressive once completed. I’m fairly sure that my brother completed a full set of thirty coins, and with the average price of a gallon of petrol being around 32.5p, that meant spending in excess of £39 on 120 gallons of four star. With our dad’s Singer Gazelle averaging around 30mpg, the full set of Esso coins would have equated to around 3,600 miles of motoring – still more if you allow for the number of duplicate coins (Peter Bonetti was ubiquitous, as you can see below).

Also well ahead of the curve were the players themselves who, for the first time, were persuaded to record a celebratory pop record ahead of the World Cup. This, of course, turned out to be an act of the utmost hubris. The right time for a commemorative World Cup song was after the win in 1966. ‘Back Home’ was written by the Eurovision-winning team of Bill Martin and Phil Coulter, whose track record included ‘Puppet on a String’ and ‘Congratulations’. Who better to pen a song in anticipation of England emerging victorious once again? In fairness to the song, the lyrics don’t mention the possibility of winning – it’s a song of hope: ‘Back home, though they think we’re the greatest that’s what we’ve got to prove’. It was also extremely catchy, and tapping into the mood of the nation as the tournament approached, it did in the pop charts what the team were hoping for on the soccer pitch, making it all the way to number one, where it resided for three weeks from the 10th to the 30th of May. On the day that the World Cup kicked off, May 31st, the squad were deposed at the top of the charts by Christie’s ‘Yellow River’, which looks in retrospect like a bad omen. A win might well have propelled the song back to the top, but by the time the squad went out 3-2 to West Germany on 14th June, the song had dropped to number 9. It would linger around the lower reaches of the chart until the beginning of August.

‘Back Home’ is probably my clearest memory of that 1970 World Cup. You couldn’t turn on the radio or TV without hearing it, and my brother had the Pye records single (with its football centre label). The only match I can remember seeing was on 14th June where England went out to West Germany. Conspiracy theories weren’t really a thing back then, but there must have been many who wondered at the food poisoning that forced star goalkeeper Gordon Banks to miss the match. 

The evening’s game was broadcast on both BBC1 and ITV – I suspect we watched the latter, where comment and analysis were provided by ‘ITV’s soccer experts’ Pat Crerand, Derek Dougan and Malcolm Allison, presided over by Billies Wright and Bremner. Over on BBC1, David Coleman and Frank Bough did the honours in the Mexico and London studios.

England’s failure at the 1970 World Cup – especially after all the promotional build-up – probably helped to put me off football forever. If I was left in any doubt, the final coffin nails were supplied by a sadistic games teacher who started taking us for football practise in the autumn. By the time the tournament was over, my only enduring interest in the game lay in following the cartoon strip ‘Billy’s Boots’ drawn by Tom Kerr in the recently launched football comic ‘Scorcher’, which was being bought for my brother every week.

England didn’t even qualify for either of the next two World Cups, and 1978 brought yet another example of pop song hubris, this time from Scottish comedian Andy Cameron whose ‘Ally’s Tartan Army’ was even more gung ho than ‘Back Home’, promising that ‘we’ll really shake them up when we win the World Cup.’ It didn’t even have an original melody. If there’s anything guaranteed to ensure failure in a World Cup tournament, it’s celebrating your win prematurely in song…

Sunday in Old Macca

It’s rare for me to go out and buy a contemporary pop album. Rarer still to do so within days of its release. Granted, one can’t technically describe Paul McCartney as ‘contemporary’, but he’s still writing and recording, and outclassing artists a third of his age.

Last time, I described how his recent single ‘Home to Us’ had strayed inadvertently into melodic territory formerly explored by Clive Dunn. To me, this didn’t bode well for the upcoming album, and I wasn’t overly impressed by the street sign sleeve design (hardly an original idea). Then I saw a social media ‘reel’ where he demonstrated a perverse dischord that he’s used to open the album and thought 'Uh-oh...'

Then the reviews started coming in. Four and five star. I don’t usually take much notice of what rock critics think, but my interest was piqued. I played some snatches of the album on Amazon music and liked it enough that I went right out the next day and bought it – from a proper record shop, not an online retailer (take that, Bezos!) The following week, it was number one on the chart: and it's probably the very last time that I'll have this week's number one album in my possession...

I hadn’t bought a McCartney album for forty four years. 1982’s Tug of War was my last purchase, and was hailed at the time as a return to form: much the same reception that’s been accorded to The Boys of Dungeon Lane. So maybe it was time to cut the Mac some slack. Thirteen pounds and ninety nine pence of my savings are now winging their way to the coffers of MPL communications, less percentages of course. Was it money well spent?

The simple answer is yes. Macca may be 83 but he’s sounding as good as he’s done since the breakup of the Beatles. The voice is, of course, older and huskier, but it’s aged well. The production is solid – ‘classic’ without sounding contrived, contemporary without being embarrassing. There’s a wide range of textures and styles, and the sleeve credits McCartney himself with an impressive array of instrumentation, not just bass and guitars but more keyboards than Rick Wakeman can fit on a stage, and drums too. The man does everything – although he is assisted by a number of collaborators including a certain Richard Starkey esquire, who drums on ‘Home to Us’.

For me, what elevates this album above all of his post Band on the Run efforts is the sheer melodic quality of the material. There have been times over the decades when Macca has sounded like he was repeating himself, going over old ground, particularly when he tried to bring a Beatles sensibility to his work. Now, he sounds like he’s tapped into a new lode: there are some genuinely surprising melodic ideas here. Lyrically, many of the songs look back on his life before the Beatles, but not in a sentimental manner. He is, after all, most likely into his last decade. He’s entitled to reflect on his life and times. It would be surprising if he didn’t, and it’s a mark of artistic integrity that he has chosen to do so.

Dungeon Lane is his first album in six years, the first work of his eighth decade. There’s no reason to suspect it will be his last – but one never knows. Personally, I suspect that, however upbeat he may come across in his promotional work, Macca must realise that anything he releases from now on may end up as his epitaph, his final artistic statement, intentional or otherwise. Is that why it’s so good? Has he been saving some of his best work for his back pages?

McCartney was always the most pragmatic of the Beatles. If it had been suggested to him, at the height of their fame, that he would still be writing and releasing music in sixty years’ time, he’d most likely have laughed off the idea. Queried about his future plans back in 1963, he foresaw himself and John retreating into songwriting rather than performing. And yet here he is, still touring the world, and still making music that ranks alongside his best post-Beatle output. 

These days, old white men are an easy target for snide media commentators. They – we – are somehow responsible for most of what’s wrong with the world today, and with the likes of Trump and Farage in the news so much, it’s easy to see why. Paul McCartney should be hailed as an ambassador for the rest of us old geezers, living proof that, over sixty, not all white guys become demented, self-aggrandising delusional egomaniacs. Granted, we’re not all on a level with Macca, but neither are we all past it. Here’s the proof that it’s still possible to be cool, relevant and original well into your eighth decade.