by Paul Feeney
Marty Wilde. The popularity of his singing style diminished in the 1960s with the arrival of new styles of music from the USA and the advent of the home-grown Merseybeat sound. Marty went on to influence and help his daughter Kim Wilde become a major international pop star in the 1980s. He has continued to write music and has established himself as a premier act on rock and roll nostalgia concert tours, which he still continues to do at the age of seventy.
Mr Pastry (Richard Hearne). He entertained us on BBC TV and on film for thirty years, and he was equally popular in the USA with frequent appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show. His slapstick Mr Pastry comedy went out of favour in the 1960s, but he continued to do lots of charity work around London and near to his home in Kent. He was made president of the Lords Taverners charity in 1963, and was awarded the OBE in 1970 for his services to charity. It is rumoured that he was offered the role of Doctor Who when Jon Pertwee left the series in 1973, but Hearne wanted to play the part in the character of Mr Pastry, and the offer was withdrawn. He died in 1979 at the age of seventy-one.
Mrs Dale’s Diary (Radio Serial Drama). The comforting tales from Mrs Dale’s diary that were played out daily on the BBC Light Programme since 1948 were considered to be too old fashioned for 1960s listeners, and in 1962 the format was changed and the series was renamed The Dales. This helped to postpone its demise, but after having transferred to the newly created BBC Radio 2 in 1967, Mrs Dale was finally taken off-air in 1969.
National Service (Peacetime Conscription). In the 1950s, the thought of doing ‘National Service’ was on the mind of every young boy as they entered their teenage years. At the time, every healthy man between eighteen and twenty-one was expected to serve in the armed forces for two years, and remain on the reserve list for three and a half years. Call-up papers would arrive on or after one’s eighteenth birthday, but the obligation would cease after the age of twenty-six. National Service formally ended on 31 December 1960, but those who had deferred service, for reasons such as University studies or on compassionate grounds, still had to complete their National Service after this date.
Police Boxes. The old police boxes, once a familiar sight on city streets, with a few exceptions, were phased out from about 1969 in favour of modern portable telecommunications. Back in 1953, there were 685 of the easily recognisable blue police boxes on the streets of London.
Police Whistles. They were phased out during the late ’60s and early ’70s, when it was considered that the increase in traffic noise made them inaudible in urban areas. They were replaced by the early hand-held police radios.
Ruby Murray. Her successful 1950s hit record and film career ended at the start of the 1960s, but she continued to appear in cabaret and nostalgia shows around Britain until shortly before her death in 1996. A compilation CD album of her hits was released in 1989, and an anthology triple CD album in 2005. Her name is still used in cockney rhyming slang to describe a curry, as in ‘a Ruby’ or ‘a Ruby Murray’. She died of liver cancer in December 1996 aged sixty-one in Torquay.
Real Love was just one of many top twenty hit records that Ruby Murray had in the 1950s. It reached number 18 in the UK charts in December 1958.
Smith’s Crisps (with the little twist bag of salt). Now indirectly owned by the New York-based company, PepsiCo. Since the 1990s, the Smith’s crisps brands have gradually been changed over to the Walker’s crisps brand, but there are still some out there.
Telegram Messenger Boys. These young boys in their navy blue uniforms and pillbox caps were familiar sights on our streets in the 1950s. The urgent messages they carried usually contained bad news, but they were a valuable service at the time. In the 1930s, 65 million telegrams were being delivered each year and the service employed 11,000 staff. In 1965, the number of telegrams delivered was down to 10 million. By 1976, most telegrams were being delivered by post, telephone or telex, rather than by hand. The continuing improvements in telecommunications eventually led to their demise, and in 1977 the Post Office decided to abolish the telegram service, although it lingered on until 1981.
Tommy Steele. In the 1960s he left his pop idol image behind and became successful in stage and film musicals, which he continued with for many years. He has performed less in recent years, with his last appearance being in his revival of Scrooge, the Musical at the London Palladium in 2005, when he was sixty-nine.
Tony Hancock. He continued to star in his own comedy TV series and appear in films well into the 1960s, but he suffered from alcoholism and depression for a long time. In 1968, he committed suicide by an overdose in a Sydney hotel room aged forty-three. At the time, he had completed only three programmes of a thirteen-part series that he was doing for Australian television called Hancock Down Under.
Trolleybuses. These gradually ceased operation during the 1960s in favour of motorised buses. London saw the end of trolleybuses in 1962, and the last UK trolleybus service to stop operating was in Bradford in 1972.
Copyright
Cover illustrations: (front) a group of Glasgow children play in the street (Mary Evans Picture Library); (back, upper) a group of children enjoy a donkey ride at Weston-super-Mare, 1955 (author’s collection); (back, lower) a young boy playing in the street in central London (author’s collection)
First published 2009
Reprinted 2009 (three times), 2010
The History Press
The Mill, Brimscombe Port
Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG
www.thehistorypress.co.uk
This ebook edition first published in 2010
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© Paul Feeney, 2009, 2010
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ISBN 978 0 7524 6227 1