In early 1968 our local newspaper, “The Isle of Thanet Gazette”, published articles on how the growth of Margate was slowing down and that Pfizer’s, one of the biggest employers in the region was looking to lay people off. It also mentioned that Margate council was considering offering free parking to halt the deterioration of the town, although how that was going to work was never really explained. None of this made any impression on me at all at the time seeing as I was too busy thinking about the GCE exams I knew I was going to fail later on in the year.
My very perceptive form teacher Frank Skinner summed me up in this comment from one of my last school reports and I couldn’t have agreed with him more, especially the bit about being thoughtful and sensitive. Unfortunately, this did not translate into attracting any female attention in my direction so I put all my efforts into revising for my exams instead.
As part of the CSE exam process I teamed up with my friend Terry on a Geography project that revolved around the subject of entertainment in Margate. Not the kind of entertainment teenagers got up to under the Sun Deck on Margate beach of a Saturday night, but entertainment as in shows and films and such. We kind of wandered off the track a bit when we discovered a rumour that Lady Hamilton would wait for Lord Nelson to visit her in “The Towers” during the intermission of whatever play he was watching at the Theatre Royal just around the corner, but I’d say that still falls under the heading of entertainment, wouldn’t you?
Looking at our efforts after all these years I’d forgotten the project listed all the cinemas in Margate but can’t for the life of me remember anything about the Astoria. I do remember the summer of 1968 as regards who was appearing at the Winter Gardens though.
Here’s the newspaper advert for the Danny La Rue and Ronnie Barker show “Let’s Get Swinging” which was so popular it was held back for a few weeks or more in order to meet demand. It was memorable for me because, as I mention in the book, Declan (not his real name), an Irish uncle of mine who stayed with us during the summer holidays along with the rest of his family, went to the show and came back with La Rue’s autograph on a five-pound-note. A day or so later he turned up with the same five-pound note signed this time by actor Buddy Ebsen, who was famous for playing Jed Clampett in “The Beverly Hillbillies” TV show. This will invoke one of a number of reactions from whoever might be reading this such as a) “OMG! Buddy Ebsen / Jed Clampett! OMG! LOL!” or b) “who in the name of hell is Buddy Ebsen?” Or possibly c) “Whatever”.
1968 was also the year I started to become a real proper teenager when I attended my first dance / disco / music event, the weekly Rendezvous Club at Dreamland ballroom. It was hosted by a DJ called Mick T and they also had live groups playing there practically every week. Unfortunately, I missed out on seeing the likes of The Who, Small Faces and The Troggs but other groups also playing that year that I did eventually get to see included The Herd, Geno Washington and the Ram Jam Band, The Equals and The Tremeloes. As for Peter Green’s Fleetwood Mac, let’s file that under unfinished business (read the book).
My introduction to the teenage night-life culture of Margate was marred quite early one evening when a fight broke out in the ballroom and one of the bouncers was stabbed in the head. I happened to be walking into the ballroom when the incident took place and to this day I’ve never seen so much blood in my life. Thankfully I didn’t faint like I had previously at the sight of copious amounts of claret. It was probably my body psychologically adjusting to the idea that there’d be more blood where that came from in the future, and some of it would be mine.
Happy days.
Towards the end of the year I learnt that the Beach Boys were going to be touring Britain but there was never going to be any chance I’d be able to afford to get up to London to see them. They’d just had a number one hit in the British charts that summer with a retro-surf song called “Do It Again” so they were still extremely popular over here in the UK. Somehow or other I found out that one of my favourite pirate radio DJs, Roger ‘Twiggy’ Day, who happened to live in Margate, was going to be compering the tour and through a friend of a friend of a friend I ended up with a copy of the program as shown above. It didn’t occur to me to ask Mr. Day if maybe he could get the boys to sign it as well which in retrospect was a bit lax on my part but I was happy enough with just the brochure itself.
As to my ongoing vinyl habit, here’s a selection of some of the albums from 1968 that I still miraculously have in my collection.
For some reason I only have three of the four photos that came with the Beatles White album (No. 0033702) so if anyone out there has a spare copy of Ringo’s picture I’d love to be able to complete the collection and then see much I could get for it on Ebay. Things are tough at the moment.
I think this was the only Xmas present I asked for and Santa dutifully obliged. I must have been a very good boy that year.
Join me next week for an overview of some of the films and TV programs that kept me out of trouble in nineteen-hundred-and-sixty-eight.
Steve Mayhew 