A Pale Shade of Pink

A ramble through the autumn of 1964...

Memories are intriguing. They lie, for years, like gold coins lost in the mud and silt at the bottom of a pond. Then something comes along to stir up the silt and suddenly, there they are, revealed and still shiny like new, like they’d happened yesterday.

I’m find this happens a lot lately – maybe it’s part of getting older. Just recently, BBC4 ran a couple of Peter, Paul and Mary concerts from 1983. Seeing them, I was reminded of the very first time I saw the folk trio, on television in the early 60s, singing their hit 'Blowin' in the Wind'. For some reason, I knew it had been a Sunday afternoon. Out of curiosity, I checked the BBC’s Genome database – and straight away I found the broadcast I was thinking of, on the afternoon of Sunday 25 October 1964. The day happened to be our Grandfather’s 56th birthday, and we would almost certainly have been entertaining our grandparents to Sunday tea. It might all have happened yesterday…

In the autumn of 1964, I was just three and a half years old. Prior to this, my memories are more fragmentary, and there’s less sense of continuity. Suddenly, though, around this time, they begin to join up. Rather than glimpses or flashes of the past, they become a narrative. This week in 1964, Herman’s Hermits were number one in what used to be called the ‘Hit Parade’ with their single ‘I’m Into Something Good’. This was the very first record I owned, and that fact speaks of a growing awareness of my environment, an appreciation of atmosphere, a sense of time and place that seems to have got going around now. I can still remember having the record bought for me: the shop sold televisions, gramophones and domestic goods, as well as having a supply of singles and Lps. A dansette style record player stood at one end of the counter so that customers could try out a record before buying, and a wire rack held some of the most popular discs of the day. The 7” single was on the Columbia label, and came in a green paper sleeve. I can clearly remember taking it home – it was a bright, sunny day, a memory which is borne out by Met Office records – their summary for September 1964 reads ‘sunny and dry.’

A week or so later, the XVIII Olympiad began in Tokyo, an event of which I was principally aware on account of Helmut Zacharias’ evocative ‘Tokyo Melody’, an oriental sounding theme that accompanied the TV coverage, and was widely played on radio, reaching number 9 in the charts in November. A nightly round-up of the day’s Olympic events preceded the BBC News every evening during the fortnight of the games, and although I was far too young to take an interest in what was happening in the sporting world, the imagery left an impression – the Olympic logo, and a shot of the stadium that formed a backdrop to the BBC studio presentation. 

It was around this time that a lot of television series began to leave a lasting impression. Autumn 1964 saw the arrival of Gerry Anderson’s Stingray – and I’ve already written about the return of Bleep and Booster, who had made their Blue Peter debut back in March. Other children’s programmes that autumn included The Five O’Clock Club, Zoo Time and Junior Criss-Cross Quiz on ITV; Deputy Dawg, Animal Magic and Tales from Europe on BBC1, along with Crackerjack and Junior Points of View. I was also aware of programmes aimed at an older audience – US comedies Car 54 Where Are You? and The Beverley Hillbillies were running on ITV, alongside quiz shows Double Your Money and Take Your Pick.

The BBC’s Watch With Mother had been doubled up since earlier in the year, with a broadcast at 10.45 in the morning – seemingly intended as a ‘primer’ for Play School, which followed it over on BBC2 – and a different series in the traditional lunchtime slot. The original line-up was still in place, each series assigned to a specific day of the week: Picture Book on Monday, Andy Pandy on Tuesday, Rag, Tag and Bobtail on Thursday and The Woodentops on Friday. This year, however, saw Rag, Tag and Bobtail ousted by relative newcomer Tales of the Riverbank, not originally a WWM series (it had been broadcast at teatime since 1960). R,T&B would be dropped altogether the following year.

There’s one specific afternoon in autumn 1964 I’m able to recall, and thanks to the TV listings I can put a date to it: Tuesday 20 October. That afternoon, BBC1 had Olympic coverage from 3.00pm till 5.05, followed by children’s programmes beginning with Deputy Dawg. Our dad typically arrived home from work around 6.00 – and it was while the evening’s Olympic Report was going out on BBC1 (5.55-6.20) that I heard him say something about a TV series on later that evening which he called ‘The Aeroplane Story.’ I had many toy aeroplanes, but had never seen a real one other than those that occasionally droned overhead – and my ears pricked up at the sound of this. Any television programme with a title like that must surely be of interest. I think I’d have been disappointed if I’d been allowed to stay up for it. The programme was actually ATV’s The Plane Makers, and was more concerned with boardroom drama than the planes themselves. The popular drama kicked off its third series on that evening, which is why our dad would have been talking about it. How I can date this memory so precisely is simply a quirk of memory: his words stayed in my mind, and with them, the image of the Olympic stadium which is probably what I was looking at on TV while he was talking.

A few weeks later, on Thursday 19 November, the BBC introduced a generation to a television serial that became embedded in the national psyche. The Singing Ringing Tree had been a colour film produced in the GDR in 1957, which was acquired by the BBC’s Peggy Miller and cut down into a three-part serial, broadcast in black and white, with an English narration from actor Tony Bilbow. There was an unsettling atmosphere about the whole production, arising partly through the use of studio sets standing in for exteriors but mostly on account of the costumes and characters, some of which were the stuff of nightmares: especially the Bear (into which form a luckless Prince is transformed) and, dare I use the word, the dwarf, sight of whom sent me for cover behind one of our fireside chairs. There is a very specific atmosphere attached to this memory: I can see leafless branches in the garden against a blue-grey evening sky, there’s the residual memory of Blue Peter that preceded the serial (Christopher Trace and Valerie Singleton were the presenters) and the image of my brother in a tartan romper suit. I was becoming increasingly aware of mood and atmosphere, and The Singing Ringing Tree was a classic example. 1964 had a particular feeling, an atmosphere of its own, and evenings like this were a big part of what defined it.

It wasn’t all about television, though. Our mum usually had the radio on all day, tuned to the BBC Light Programme, which meant I got to hear programmes like Housewives’ Choice and Music While You Work, both of whose theme tunes were instantly familiar. Looking back on them, they seem to come from an earlier era. Another very familiar radio theme was that of The Archers, which preceded Listen With Mother every afternoon. I also recall The Dales – an update of the original Mrs. Dale’s Diary – which was broadcast twice a day, morning and afternoon. Its melodic, slightly melancholic signature tune (composed by Johnny Dankworth) is deeply etched into my memories of this era, but has defied all my efforts to find a copy online.

Away from the mass media, I was becoming more aware of my surroundings. The man-made environment of cars and buildings was opening out, and I began to take more notice of things like street furniture – roadsigns, street lamps, pillar boxes – and packaging. The boxed items I saw in shops – sweets in particular – and signage such as that employed by Corgi Toys left a powerful impression. Graphic design had evolved into a stylish minimalism, with occasional nods towards Op Art. To this day, the fonts that were ‘of the moment’ in 1964 remain my favourites: Grotesk No. 9, Compacta, Franklin Gothic Condensed. Serifs were old hat. There was a kind of style consensus in play in this era, the like of which it’s hard to conceive of today. People dressed in specific ways, and furnished their homes with remarkable consistency. I think it was this year that our parents gave their bedroom a bit of a facelift – a new pink carpet and a matching lampshade. If I had to sum up my recollections of 1964 with a single sensory impression, it would be that shade of pale pink. 

There was no reason not to suppose that this man-made world I saw opening out around me would endure in this form in perpetuity. In reality, it was all gone in a couple of years. What I experienced in 1964, in asethetic terms, was really the high watermark of 1950s style – the end of the atom age. By the mid-60s, a looser, freer style had taken hold, sweeping away the formalism that had held sway during the post-war era. People looked different. The world looked different. 1964 was, if anything, a year of transition: America was recovering from the shock of Kennedy’s assassination, and the Beatles were setting out on their mission of world domination. England was beginning to swing. Men were preparing to fly to the moon.

The world I was suddenly aware of was on the brink of radical change. But in the suburban Midlands, it was still, in a sense, the 1950s. And pale pink.

'The end of the atom age': though not specific to 1964, these confectionery packages perfectly illustrate the ultimate expression of 1950s minimalist styling, that reached its zenith in that year.