A 1960s Childhood: From Thunderbirds to Beatlemania (Childhood Memories)

by Feeney, Paul

  Meanwhile, mum and dad are getting ready for work as usual. Although it’s Christmas Eve, it’s just another Friday and therefore a normal working day for grownups. Mum is hoping to finish work a bit early tonight so that she can get a few last-minute Christmas things for the big day tomorrow. By now it’s about eight o’clock, and having visited the bathroom and got dressed, you sit on your bed for a moment or two listening to the end of the Rolling Stones’ record, Get Off My Cloud, before turning off the radio and making your way downstairs. Even though mum has had the kitchen stove turned on for ages, and the two-bar electric fire has been burning in the living room since dad got up an hour ago, the house still feels cold and draughty. It looks as though your day would be best spent indoors watching television, and perhaps one last search for hidden Christmas presents. Mind you, there is nothing much to interest you on television today until children’s hour starts at five o’clock this afternoon with the Five O’Clock Club. They’ve got the Ivy League and Herman’s Hermits on the show, so that should be good. There is a film on at two o’clock, The Pickwick Papers, which might be worth watching. But, other than that, it’s just carol concerts and the dreaded Crossroads, complete with Amy Turtle and all that moving scenery. Tonight’s television doesn’t look too bad; there’s The Circus Comes to Town, Take Your Pick, Emergency Ward 10 and then Ready Steady Go with Cathy McGowan. It looks as though RSG is going to be another really good show, with tonight’s guests including the Animals, the Kinks, The Who, the Hollies, Chris Farlowe and Herman’s Hermits. That means Herman’s Hermits are on television twice tonight – that’s great!

  The picture on the front of this 1961 Jack and Jill annual was apt for many parts of the UK that Christmas, with some areas getting enough snow for sledging.

  The evening is filled with anticipation of tomorrow’s big day. It has been a couple of weeks since you wrote and posted your letter to Father Christmas in Lapland telling him what presents you would like for Christmas, and explaining how good you have been, begging him not to forget you. There is not much more that you can do, other than leave the usual glass of sherry and a mince pie in the fireplace for when he comes down the chimney tonight. Oh, and you mustn’t forget to leave a carrot out for Santa’s reindeer, Rudolf. That is all you can do in the way of bribery; now you just have to hope that Father Christmas can fit everything into his sack and that he can squeeze it all down the chimney. But it still bothers you as to how he is going to get down the chimney, what with the new electric fire mounted on the recently boarded-up fireplace. Mum and dad still haven’t been able to convincingly explain that to you.

  By now it’s half-past eight and you are sitting on the floor in front of the television watching Cathy McGowan interviewing Roger Daltrey on Ready Steady Go! You are looking forward to seeing the Hollies sing their new record, If I Needed Someone. It’s not one of their best records, but you just like the Hollies’ music. Mum is in the kitchen sorting out a few things for tomorrow, and on the table behind you there is an annoying rustling of paper with last-minute wrapping of Christmas presents. There is a ring on the doorbell and everyone instinctively knows that it’s just another group of carol singers collecting money. Everyone considers themselves to be too busy to answer the door and so the doorbell goes unanswered. Hopefully that will be the last of the door-to-door carol singers for this year. The last lot of carol singers that you answered the door to sounded like the cat’s choir, and they only sang two lines of Hark the Herald Angels Sing before thrusting their hands out for money.

  Everyone is so busy that your usual bedtime goes by completely unnoticed and you manage to watch the whole of Peyton Place, right through to half-past ten, before your mum eventually suggests that it’s time you went to bed. Pleading with her that it’s Christmas Eve doesn’t carry much weight and so you finally give in and shuffle off on your wibbly-wobbly way to bed. Anyway, all the good television programmes have already finished and there is only the news and religious programmes left to watch. Your mum will be in the kitchen until well after midnight and so your dad stays up and watches midnight mass, which is being televised this year from Waltham Abbey in Essex. When he does eventually turn off the television, he will probably fall asleep in his chair waiting for the little white dot to disappear from the screen.

  Next morning arrives, and it is Christmas Day at last! It’s only ten o’clock but you are up and dressed, and you have emptied the Christmas stocking that was on the end of your bed, done the family breakfast bit and opened your presents; all except for the one from granny, which you will open later when she arrives for Christmas dinner. Some pretty good presents this year, including a really flash, remote-controlled James Bond Aston Martin DB5 car. It’s in a beautiful silver colour and it’s got loads of fancy James Bond spy stuff on it, just like in the films. There’s a bullet-proof shield that you can make go up and down, hidden machine guns that come out at the front and light up with machine-gun sounds, a push button ejector seat that throws the enemy through the sunroof and both licence plates revolve. But you can’t try it out because you can’t find the batteries to run it, so you are waiting for your dad to sort it out for you. You also got a Dalek shooting game, a Booma Boomerang, a Stingray television story book, a couple of stuffed Gonks and some Lego. Oh, and not forgetting the ten-bob note that auntie sent you in the post. You are pleased to see that your dad got the new Beatles’ Rubber Soul LP for Christmas, but you are a little disappointed because it’s the mono version, and you would have preferred the stereo version for when mum and dad get rid of the old mono record player and buy a new stereo player with separate speakers. Never mind though, it still sounds great, just as long as it’s played very loudly! Oh, and mum got a lovely new Tick-a-Tick-a-Timex watch.

  The Stingray children’s marionette television series was created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson and produced by AP films for Associated Television from 1964–65, with thirty-five half-hour episodes in all.

  You have lots of new toys and games to play with, but you find yourself curled up on the sofa in front of the television, folding a square sheet of paper into a multitude of sections to make your own fortune-teller finger game. And you’re not even watching the latest episodes of Supercar, Fireball XL5 and Stingray that are on ITV, but instead you are watching the 30-year-old Laurel and Hardy films that they’re showing on BBC1. The antics of Laurel and Hardy have you in fits of laughter, so much so that your sides are beginning to ache, and you are enjoying it far too much to turn over for the Adventure Showcase on the other channel. Perhaps one day somebody will invent a television recording machine so that you don’t have to miss anything on television ever again!

  Everyone dressed up smart on Christmas Day, and there were lots of new brightly patterned Christmas jumpers proudly worn in every household especially for the day (whatever happened to them all after Christmas?). The table was laid early for Christmas dinner, with all the best glasses and cutlery, table napkins and Christmas crackers. And the dinner was always served sharp at one o’clock. It somehow seemed important to have it finished in time for the Queen’s Christmas Message, which was always broadcast at three o’clock. Turkey was quite expensive and so many families had roast chicken or goose for their Christmas dinner, and plates were piled high with roast potatoes, stuffing, loads of vegetables and lashings of gravy. When you were stuffed full of Christmas dinner, your mum would bring in the Christmas pudding, into which she had already put some sixpences or threepenny bits. It was considered to be lucky if you found one in your piece of pudding – extra lucky if you broke a tooth on one! As was the tradition, your dad would pour some of his Christmas brandy over the pudding and set fire to it. You would then struggle to eat the smallest piece of what was a very rich plum pudding, whilst trying to avoid swallowing one of the coins that were buried somewhere inside. In between dinner and teatime, you would munch on a variety of snacks laid out on the sideboard, from chestnuts and Twiglets to marshmallows and chocolates. It was the only day in the year t
hat you could really stuff yourself silly. Sometime during the afternoon you would be prised away from the television to go outside for a walk out in the fresh air, to ‘help your dinner go down’. Fortunately, you are back in time to watch Disney Time and play on the floor for a while with your new remote-controlled James Bond car before it’s teatime and Doctor Who comes on the television at half-past six. Flicking through the TV Times, you are disappointed to see that ITV is showing Thunderbirds at the same time that Doctor Who is on BBC1. Why do they do that?

  By late afternoon, you have succeeded in sampling every single snack on the sideboard, from Turkish delight to dried dates, and just when you feel that you have had enough, your mum starts to serve afternoon tea: cold turkey and ham sandwiches, sausage rolls and pickled onions, with lots of sweet things like mince pies, Victoria sponge cake, fruit jelly and blancmange. After tea, mum hands around her box of Black Magic chocolates that your dad bought her for Christmas, while dad puffs away on one of the half corona cigars that he was gifted. At last, granny prompts you to open the ‘special’ present she bought for you. It turns out to be a really great present, not the usual pair of socks or a set of hankies, but instead it’s a fabulous Parker 51 fountain pen. It’s the absolute bee’s knees of fountain pens, more prized than the newer Parker 61 version. All of your friends at school will be really jealous!

  The TV Times Extra magazine from 1962.

  Evening soon arrives and everyone is now full to the brim with Christmas food. Someone suggests playing a board game, but that’s just too energetic a task for anyone to undertake and nobody has any brainpower left, so everyone sinks down into a cosy chair to watch the best of the evening’s television programmes. Meanwhile, dad studies the Christmas Radio Times and TV Times magazines to see what’s on. He is now firmly in charge of television viewing for the night, so will he let you watch The Arthur Haynes Show at half-past eight, or will he want to watch the Bing Crosby and Bob Hope film on the other side, Road to Bali? Yes, you end up watching the comedy film. However, there is good news because when the film ends the television is left on BBC1 for The Ken Dodd Show and your dad forgets all about The Bruce Forsyth Show on the other side, which he had been saying all day that he wanted to watch. Great!

  It’s now half-past ten, The Ken Dodd Show has just finished and everyone is chatting away, having lost interest in what’s on television. It means that you can sit on the floor and watch the specially extended Christmas edition of Top of the Pops. And The Beatles are still number one with Day Tripper.

  By the time television closes down for the night, you are fast asleep on the floor, and your mum has to wake you to go to bed. Even on Christmas night all three of the television channels would close down at midnight, after which the grownups would usually play a board game or a game of cards for a while. But for kids that had managed to stay up late, it was now time for bed.

  Ten

  MEMORABLE 1960S EVENTS

  First Man in Space

  Wednesday 12 April 1961, Yuri Gagarin, the Soviet cosmonaut aboard Vostok 1 spacecraft, became the first human in outer space and the first to orbit the Earth. After the flight, although Gagarin remained in the Soviet Air Force, he became a Soviet hero and somewhat of a celebrity, travelling the world to promote the Soviet achievement. He died on 27 March 1968 when his MiG-15 crashed while on a routine training flight. He was buried in the Kremlin Wall on Red Square in Moscow. He was 34.

  Birth Control Pill

  Monday 4 December 1961, the contraceptive pill was officially introduced into Britain when Enoch Powell, the Conservative government’s Minister of Health, announced that the oral contraceptive pill could in future be prescribed through the National Health Service at a subsidised price of 2s per month.

  Satellite Television

  Monday 23 July 1962, the first ever publicly available transatlantic satellite television signal was relayed by the Telstar 1 communications satellite. The first pictures were of the Statue of Liberty in New York and the Eiffel Tower, and the first broadcast included BBC’s Richard Dimbleby in Brussels. That same evening, Telstar 1 relayed the first telephone call to be transmitted through space, and it successfully transmitted faxes, data and both live and taped television, including the first live transmission of television across an ocean, to Pleumeur-Bodou in north-west France.

  Cuban Missile Crisis

  October 1962 is generally regarded as the time when the Cold War, primarily between the USA and the USSR, came closest to becoming a nuclear war, when United States intelligence discovered that the Cuban and Soviet governments had placed nuclear missiles in Cuba during the preceding weeks and that they were building missile bases. During the crisis, the US government sought to do all it could to ensure removal of the missiles. The crisis ended on 28 October 1962, when President John F. Kennedy and the United Nations Secretary-General U. Thant reached agreement with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev for the dismantling and return of weapons to the Soviet Union. This was in exchange for President Kennedy’s undertaking to remove all US missiles from Turkey and an arrangement with regard to future respect of Cuban borders and its sovereignty.

  Beatlemania

  The media first used the term ‘Beatlemania’ in early 1963, soon after The Beatles had achieved their first UK number one hit single, Please Please Me. Beatlemania was the name used to describe the intense levels of hysteria shown by fans whenever The Beatles were seen in public anywhere in the UK. Early in 1964 the phenomenon spread to America, when The Beatles made their first visit there following the success of their single, I Want to Hold Your Hand, which was their first number one hit single in the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. Beatlemania was at its height from 1963–65, when The Beatles were touring extensively and made the films Hard Day’s Night (1964) and Help! (1965).

  Great Train Robbery

  This was the name given to the £2.6 million robbery from a Glasgow–Euston night train that took place when the train reached Bridego Railway Bridge, Ledburn, near Mentmore in Buckinghamshire on Monday 8 August 1963. The robbery was carried out by a London gang, which numbered about fifteen in total. Thirteen of the gang were soon caught and in April 1964 the seven main culprits were each sentenced to thirty years imprisonment. These included Ronnie Biggs, who managed to escape from prison after serving only fifteen months. He fled first to Paris, then Australia and then to Brazil, where he remained until 2001 when he voluntarily returned to the UK. He was arrested on his arrival in the UK and re-imprisoned to serve the remainder of his thirty-year sentence. Biggs suffered a lot of ill health while in prison and on 6 August 2009, the day before his 80th birthday, he was released from custody on ‘compassionate grounds’.

  Assassination of John F. Kennedy

  John F. Kennedy, 35th President of the United States, was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on Friday 22 November 1963, at the age of 46. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested and charged with the assassination. Oswald denied the charge and was killed by Jack Ruby on Sunday 24 November before he could be indicted or tried.

  BBC2 Launch

  The third British television channel, BBC2, was launched during the evening of Monday 20 April 1964, but due to a huge power failure only brief news bulletins could be shown that evening. The first programme to be officially shown on the new channel was Play School, which was broadcast the following morning, Tuesday 21 April 1964.

  BIBA Opens in London

  Monday 7 September 1964, Barbara Hulanicki, fashion designer, and her husband Stephen Fitz-Simon, opened the first BIBA ladies fashion boutique in what was previously a small chemist’s shop at 87 Abingdon Road, Kensington, London. BIBA quickly became an important and famous part of the sixties fashion revolution.