So, here we finally are. The last blog for “The Maynards of Margate”. 1972 was the year I’d get my first salaried job and start my journey properly into manhood, a journey that has now led me at the age of nearly seventy to start contemplating my place in the scheme of things.

Influencer, eco-warrior, entrepreneur, activist, eco-vegan, feminist, philanthropist and any other ist you care to mention.  I am none of these. What I actually am is an ageing git of a baby-boomer eking out my retirement whilst contemplating the notion that, according to the Daily Mail anyway, if I keep a constant check for weird looking skin lesions, stop eating red meat, watch my weight, go easy on the alcohol, do my ten thousand steps a day, exercise regularly, keep taking the statins and blood pressure tablets, then I might – might – make it into my 80s in one piece. I will of course by then be suffering from some kind of Alzheimer’s related condition but the good news is I won’t know it because I’ve got Alzheimer’s.

All this aside, I’m left with the burning question for which I currently have no answer – what the hell am I going to do with all the shit I’ve accumulated over the last six decades of my life? I’m up to my ears in magazines – Playboy, Famous Monsters of Film Land, Starlog, Boys Cinema, Films and Filming, Rolling Stone  – as well as rock concert brochures, film brochures, film posters, thousands of vinyl singles, more vinyl LPs than I can count, CDs I’ll probably never play again, VHS tapes I can’t play even if I wanted to, and a DVD collection that’s heading for the nearest landfill site the minute I fall off the perch. On the other hand, once I’m dead I won’t care anyway, so I’ve got that going for me. Oh, and while we’re here, sorry about screwing up the planet, but I didn’t do it all on my own you know. 

The only thing that keeps me sane is my writing, yet perversely it drives me crazy as well. I remember an old saying about how easy it is to write a book. Upon being faced with a blank page, or screen, that needs to be filled with the thoughts and words your adoring public are breathlessly waiting to read, all you have to do is concentrate as hard as you possibly can until the blood starts to seep through the pores of your forehead. And you know something? It’s true. Writing is bloody hard, and don’t let anyone tell you different. But I love it.

I was going to list some of the films I saw in 1972 but seeing as my story finishes in February of that year then it’s not worth the effort. I thought long and hard about what this final blog might contain, then realised I’d written quite a big chunk of it already. Whilst rewriting “The Maynards of Margate” my part-time editor, Mark Stay, and the guy who tells me if I’ve strayed too far over the line vis-à-vis my non-PC witterings, told me he thought the ending was a bit downbeat and that I should “kill a few darlings” and finish it on a happier note. Which I did, taking to the task as if I were Darth Vader slaughtering the younglings in “Revenge of the Sith”. But, I didn’t throw any of it away. You never know when you might need the stuff again. By the way I hope you’re taking notes on this as it just might help you one day should you ever decide to take up writing. Just do it a damned sight earlier than I did.

I am going to leave you with a cautionary tale from 1974 that deals with the things that matter the most to red-blooded young men in their early twenties. I am of course talking about sex, drugs, music and sex. What else would you want to think about?

Metropolitan Tube Line, September 14^th, 1974

I’m hanging by one hand from a ceiling strap in the middle of a tube train as the carriage sways from side-to-side on its way to Wembley Park tube station. Me and my girlfriend Catherine and I have been separated by a crowd of other passengers who, like us, are on their way to a concert at Wembley Stadium to see the popular super-group, Crosby Stills Nash and Young. The carriage, in fact the whole train itself, is awash with a sea of denim, tie-die t-shirts and multi-coloured bandanas, this being the uniform of choice for all the young people who want to stand out from the crowd, myself included. Apart from the bandana of course. Even I thought that was going a bit too far. Catherine and I manage to throw the occasional smile in each other’s direction as a sign of our love for each other whilst the train lurches from station to station. I feel relieved when she smiles back. Things hadn’t gone too well between us the day before and I’m hoping that going to the concert together, which we’ve both been looking forward to for the last couple of weeks, might improve relations a little. 

I share a poky little one-bedroom flat with James Wilson, a friend from my Margate days, in Chiswick, from where I commute during the week to Sloane Square then on to my place of work at a computing company located behind Chelsea Town Hall just off the King’s Road. I’d moved to London in May and the difference between living there and in Margate is immeasurable. I’ve never been happier and I’ve promised myself that a team of wild horses wouldn’t be able to ever drag me back again there again. London is everything Margate isn’t, so why would I? My flatmate has gone home for a few days leaving the place to me and Catherine, which means we can spend some quality time together without our clothes on. I cringe inwardly at the memory of twenty-four hours before when Catherine and I were in the flat. To say that the behaviour of my girlfriend of the last month or so has been erratic is to put it mildly. One moment she’s telling me how much I mean to her and that she’s never met anyone like me before, the next she’s hurling invective and thunderbolts of anger in my direction accompanied by a diatribe on how all men are bastards and she wished every one of them were dead. Yesterday she woke in a sullen mood, and it was the first morning since we’d been together in the flat that we didn’t make love. After an awkwardly silent breakfast I tried to brighten things up a bit. I retrieved my trusty old red guitar without the pickup from the corner of the room and tried strumming a few chords to the Neil Young song, “Heart of Gold”, in the hope that the thought of actually seeing the singer in the flesh the following day might cheer my girlfriend up a little, but no such luck. Or maybe I’m just shit at playing the guitar.

As I went to put the guitar away, she held out her hand in a silent request for the instrument. Sitting on a large bean bag in the middle of the room, Catherine started to play a few random chords, telling me in a quiet voice that her father had once encouraged her to take lessons. At last. Communication. I sat on a small sofa a few feet away from her and asked if there was anything specific she could teach me to play. Catherine immediately launched into what was to me an astounding piece of classical guitar playing, demonstrating a mastery of the instrument that I hitherto could only have guessed at. I was just about to tell her how great she was when she abruptly stopped playing, screamed “My fucking father! Always fucking asking me to play the fucking guitar! I hate the fucking thing!” and then launched the offensive instrument into the air. In the split-second it took to fly across the room and land with a loud thump against the opposite wall I surmised three things about my latest girlfriend:

Catherine was not that enamoured of her father

Catherine wasn’t too crazy about the guitar either

Catherine wasn’t quite all there

I have to say in mitigation that there was one thing in particular that Catherine did like very much, as did I, so ignoring the age-old dictum to never sleep with anyone who has more problems than you, I gave her a pass on the last of my three observations, for a while anyway.

The carriage became even more crowded as another bunch of far out denim-clad hippy types pushed their way on to the train about three stops before our destination, with Catherine and I now separated even further apart down the carriage in opposite directions. Two young long-haired guys, still in their teens by the looks of it, were rammed right up against me, and started talking about the concert.

“So, who’s like, you know, on with Crosby Stills Nash and Young then?” asked hippy number one.

“Er… The Band, I think, and someone called Joni Mitchell”, hippy number two replied helpfully.

“Don’t know much about this Joni Mitchell. What’s she like, like?”

“Not sure really. A bit like Melanie maybe?”

“Oh, wow, Melanie man, she’s like, you know, real cool”

I should interject at this point for those of you who have no idea who Melanie is. She was an American singer-songwriter with a bit of a strange warble to her voice who’d had a couple of hits in the early 1970s with records such as “What Have They Done to My Song, Ma?” and a cover of the Rolling Stones song, “Ruby Tuesday”. She’d also enjoyed chart success in the UK with a novelty record called “Brand New Key”, the melody of which was later appropriated by a West country group called The Wurzels for their classic chart hit “I’ve Got a Brand-New Combine Harvester”, so we’re not exactly talking high culture here.

“Yeah, Melanie, man,” agreed hippy number two. “I’m like, you know, down with that as well”

“I saw her at the Festival Hall last year. She was far out, you know?” said hippy number one.

“Yeah, I know, man. I really dig her too. Melanie. She’s like –  a real child of God”

I looked down, in more ways than one, at the twat that was hippy number two. Melanie? A child of God? A few hit singles to her name, one of them complete and utter shite, a voice that made her sound as though someone had just poured carbolic acid down her throat and now she was the second Messiah? How many magic mushrooms had these idiots eaten for breakfast this morning?

As the train finally stopped at Wembley Park and disgorged the hundreds of delusional hippies who thought they were going to change the world despite being stoned out of their gourd most of the time, I realised that I’d come to the end of the line, in more ways than one, on the whole hippy thing. It just wasn’t for me anymore. I was twenty-two, well on the way into adulthood, and it was time to let go of the dreams I’d nurtured for a better world and start thinking about number one. I should forget about computers and maybe try and get into banking. I’m hearing any idiot can make a lot of money in banking. The only problem was I’d probably have to cut my hair though. Screw that.

Me and Catherine went to the concert and had a great time. There was so much dope being passed around we were zonked by the time it started. The Band were so-so, Joni Mitchell absolutely brilliant, Crosby and the boys not so much but we all had a real cool time anyway. In our last few days together Catherine and I adopted a 24/7 approach to sex and shagged each other stupid during our last few days alone together in the flat. Before I knew it she was off back to university from where she ceremoniously dumped me not too long afterwards. In a way I was quite relieved. Those flying guitars can take your eye out if you’re not careful.

Thank you and goodnight.

“Midnight Cowboy” isn’t the most uplifting of films at the best of times and it certainly didn’t help when my girlfriend at the time told me I had obviously fashioned my appearance on Dustin Hoffman as the conman and hustler Ratzo Rizzo. She should see what I look like now.

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I much preferred Hoffman’s portrayal of Jack Crabbe in “Little Big Man”, one of the few films I’ve seen that were as good as the book, which I’d read a few years before. This was at a time when America – or Hollywood to be exact – started to take a long hard look at the way the settlers had treated Native Americans over the last few hundred years or so. “Little Big Man” was the better of the two films shown above, “Soldier Blue” reveling too much in the blood-letting and an in-your-face reference to the Vietnam War.

Be honest. Take a look at the poster above and then don’t try and tell me your first reaction isn’t “Jeez, that has got to hurt”.

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A couple of little gems that hit the big screen in 1971. he following year saw the release of another Burt Lancaster Western, “Ulzana’s Raid”. This and “Valdez” would make a great double bill if you were so inclined.

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Talking of double bills this has got to be one of the best or worst ever depending upon your cinematic taste. Reviews for “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls” seem to be split between “trashy, gaudy and about as funny as a burning orphanage” or “a satire of Hollywood conventions, genres, situations, dialogue, characters and success formulas”, although that last one was written by film critic Roger Ebert who also co-scripted the film, so make of that what you will. As for “Myra Breckinridge”, if you’ve ever wanted to know what a film directed by a British ex-pop singer (Mike Sarne) looks like then check it out. Or not as the case might be.

I recently caught “Bloody Mama” on TV and remembered a pre-fame Robert DeNiro as a glue-sniffing drug addict who succumbs to an overdose before the bloody climax of the film. A very low-budget effort but enjoyable just the same.

This is the double bill that got the er.. juices flowing between me and my girlfriend. Check out page 298 of the Kindle version of the book if you want to know more. Pervert.

Probably my favourite of all the films I saw in 1971. I’d tried to read the book but couldn’t really get into the mindset required to appreciate it. Once I’d seen the film it all fell into place and I even recently read it again. Not to be confused with the blandly inoffensive TV version starring George Clooney. Avoid that one at all costs. Better still – read the book.

Not that much to rave about on TV apart from a new Western series called “Alias Smith and Jones”, a comedy show supposedly inspired by “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid”. The fun came to rather an abrupt end when one of the leading actors, Pete Duel, blew his brains out and was instantly replaced by a look-alike.

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One show that did last a bit longer than most was “The Old Grey Whistle test” which began towards the end of the year and ran for nearly five decades. A lot of the acts weren’t really my cup of tea but they did showcase the Beach Boys in 1972 so somebody at the BBC must have known what they were doing.

We’re finally coming to the end of this series of posts on “The Maynards of Margate”. Just one more year left to go then it’s ‘adios amigos’ as I attempt to try and finish another of the many books I’d like to write that no one will ever read. I genuinely find writing for nobody a hugely enjoyable process, although I’m beginning to suspect that might be the first sign of madness.

In February of 1971 I finally surrendered my chastity to a willing young lady prepared to relieve me of the burden that had dominated my life for more years than I care to remember. However, if you think I’m going to go into the disgusting details here then you are sadly mistaken. Besides, I’ve already done that in the book so nothing to see here. Move on.

The other life-shattering event of 1971 was the fact that I finally moved out of my parent’s house and rented a flat in Catford with my school friend Terry whilst we attended our final term at college. We weren’t there for very long before I ran out of money and had to go back to Margate but it was a tantalizing whiff of freedom and an indication of what the future might hold for me should I ever try and leave Margate for pastures new. In the meantime I diligently studied and revised my college work as required, the image above showing me diligently copying Terry’s homework seeing as, try as I might, I still had absolutely no idea what the difference was between Ohm’s Law and Kunzes Law, apart from the fact that you had to be very careful how you pronounced the latter in mixed company.

I recently came across this image taken on the green next to the clock tower in Margate during my college years. We’d gather there at weekends and just shoot the shit, in some cases actually smoking it as well. Terry is to my left. The guy on the right is Les, one of the only two other students who attended the same course as us. He’s either stoned. Or dead.

Talking of getting stoned, in between the studying at college and the now overwhelmingly constant need to shag anything with a pulse, I’d discovered “Rolling Stone” magazine which I had begun to read avidly on a regular basis. One issue featured an article on Cheech and Chong, a comedy duo who had formed a nightclub act in America based around the personas of a couple of drug-wrecked hippies more interested in finding the next high than participating in the drudgery of real life. Sometime later I chanced upon a copy of their first album in a record store in Cliftonville in the bargain section, where it was being sold for one pound. No one had bought it because no one in the UK had actually heard of them apart from, apparently, little old me. I managed to scrape together the cost of the album, took it home and sat back as Cheech and Chong riffed on tracks such as “Blind Melon Chitlin”, “Trippin’ in Court”, “The Pope” and “Cruisin’ with Pedro de Pacas”. The best track of all though was the first one on side two, which was just called “Dave”. It really is a case of “you had to be there” but even after all these years it still brings a smile to my face.

The basic setup is that Dave is trying to get into his flat as soon as possible with the stash he’s just bought before the police arrest him. Dave’s flatmate, however, is so stoned he doesn’t have the wherewithal to open the door and let Dave in.

It goes something like this:

(Knock on the door)

Chong: Who is it?

Cheech: It’s me, Dave. Open up, man. I got the stuff.

(No answer. A loud frustrated sigh from Dave. Knock on the door)

Chong: Who is it?

Cheech: It’s me, Dave, man. Open up, I got the stuff.

Chong: Who?

Cheech: It’s Dave, man. Open up, I think the cops saw me come in here.

Chong: Dave?

Cheech: Yeah man, Dave.

Chong: Dave’s not here.

And ad infinitum. You get the drift. The point of all this is that before the days of social media and streaming and music piracy and such it was a given that if someone had an album they thought worth listening to they’d lend it to their friends and hope that one day it would come back relatively unmarked by scratches and cigarette or joint burns. The Cheech and Chong album was duly passed around the whole of Margate to all my friends and associated dope fiends, the end result being that for a couple of months afterwards you couldn’t knock on the door of anyone you knew without being greeted by some wiseass asking “Who is it?” If you were hip to the scene then you were required to answer “It’s Dave, man. I got the stuff” after which all parties concerned dissolved into fits of giggles at how funny we all were. After a while though, the joke started to pall somewhat to the point where I felt if one more person asked me who I was after I’d knocked on their door, I was primed to channel my inner Charlie Manson and tell the twat inside that if he didn’t open up right away I was going to kick the f***king door down and murder whoever was behind it.

This is the infamous copy of the very first Rolling Stones album I ever bought, infamous because the landlady of our flat in Catford genuinely thought for some inexplicable reason (hope maybe?) that a real penis was going to present itself after I demonstrated the working zipper. Personally, I think Mick and Andy Warhol missed a trick there.

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1970 was the year I finally discovered a thing called the solo female singer. First up was “Tapestry”, an album I was eagerly awaiting as I actually knew who Carole King was, mainly down to my nerdy habit of reading the songwriting credits on all the singles I had bought up to that point. Later that year I also purchased the Aretha Franklin album, then purchased the blast from the past Ronettes record which was originally released in 1963. I picked it up from a nightclub disc jockey for a fiver. You know, sometimes I think I missed my calling. 

Stay tuned for part 2 of 1971, in which I revisit some of the movies that enchanted me as a callow youth half a century ago. Another sentence I never thought I’d live long enough to ever type.

Much better than the alternative though.

“Easy Rider” has a lot to answer for man cos’ after the film came out man we all started calling each other man, man. It was like, freaky, you dig man? Great soundtrack and a surprise cameo from record producer Phil Spector stuffing copious amounts of marching powder up his nose. Wonder whatever happened to him?

I bought the soundtrack album early on and I must have got hold of an early pressing because my copy has sound effects and dialogue from the film, all of which went missing when it was subsequently released on a different label.

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Two Westerns that could not have been more different in tone and style even if they’d tried, “Butch Cassidy” ending on a freeze-frame of the doomed duo about to meet their maker at the hands of the Bolivian army. On the other hand, “The Wild Bunch” had no such reservations vis-à-vis depicting the gory demise of the main protagonists, director Sam Peckinpah composing a masterful ballet of death at the end of the movie which, to my mind anyway, still impresses over fifty years later. By the way I’ve had to use an image of “The Wild Bunch” poster from my own collection in place of the one on the net owned and copyrighted by Alamy who seem intent on buying up every single photograph ever taken. Blood-sucking bastards.

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A couple of years before the release of “Battle of Britain” I cycled out to Manston airfield with some school friends and we passed a long row of Spitfires and Messerschmitt’s which I later found out were en-route to Spain where they shot a lot of the aerial sequences for the film. I wished I’d taken a photograph because whenever I tell anyone about what I saw that day they just laugh and reckon I must have dropped some LSD, what with it being the sixties and that. Talking of which, Stanley Kubrick must have partaken of an acid trip or two when shooting “2001”. I saw the film in the cinema twice, once when it finally arrived in Margate at the Plaza cinema approximately eighteen months after its original release and again in 1978 on a huge 70mm screen in London. I’ve watched it a few times since and I still have absolutely no idea what it’s all about. It looks good though.

This double-bill looked pretty good too. Both films featured actor John Richardson, quite possibly the luckiest man to ever grace the silver screen. He not only starred opposite Ursula Andress AND Raquel Welch, he also married actress Martine Beswick. This poster was actually given away free at the time of release to anyone who cared to write in to Hammer Studios and request a copy. You’d be lucky to buy one in good condition for less than £350 these days. This is an image of the one I purchased a few years ago, purely for its resale value only of course.

You might think it strange to feature a poster for a film made in 1965 in a blog post devoted to the year 1970. I’m showing it here because when, on my first day at college, the film and TV production students got to watch “The Ipcress File” whilst I was forced to take a maths test instead, I belatedly realised I’d signed up for the wrong course. My bad. Such a bore. Still, the government paid.

Just one new TV show to mention from 1970, “UFO” being the first live-action TV series from Gerry Anderson who by now had obviously decided to change direction from puppets with strings attached to using real-life actors instead. I believe it has a cult following of some kind to this day but it didn’t really catch on with me. I was starting to leave a lot of my earlier interests behind and take up a few new ones, as illustrated in the image above. For those of you not in the know, the lady on the left is actress Wanda Ventham, proud mother of Benedict Cumberbatch. You see, it’s not always about me, is it? 

It is really though.

In the summer of 1970 my dad helped me get a part-time job on the British Rail cross-channel boats that plied their trade between Dover to Calais and Boulogne. A condition for employment was that I had to join the Seaman’s Union (no jokes please) and above is the photograph taken that fateful day. Many years later one of my daughters worked on a film called ‘The Informer’ and crew members were asked to supply photographs of relatives or friends suitable to be used in the background on a wanted poster. She offered them this image which apparently attracted a lot of attention along the lines of “Is that really your dad? You poor sod” / “Jesus wept, who the f*ck is that?” etc etc. In the end I didn’t make the cut but there’s always a next time.

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Here are some of the warped individuals I worked with on the “Lord Warden” ferry, including a certain individual who posed for a photograph in which he hung a sausage from his open flies as a joke. Only upon developing the film did I realise it wasn’t a sausage. Honest your honour.

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I go into quite a lot of detail in the book about the Film and TV course I attended at Ravensbourne College of Art & Design so I won’t repeat myself here other than to show you some of the images that, unlike me, have survived the ravages of time. That’s my school friend Terry in the top photo. The equipment you see was donated to the college by the BBC, equipment bought and paid for with money extorted from the public via the TV license so I have to thank the tax payer twice, once for the ex-BBC stuff and again for the grant.

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After five days at college it would be back to the usual weekend hobby of getting smashed on Olde English Cider, failing miserably to pull, and then recovering by Monday morning in time to catch the 6:30 train up to Bromley. By 1970, however, there was another item to add to the list, that of attempting to avoid being duffed over by the rampant crowds of skinheads known as the Inky gang that ran riot in Margate. You might think I exaggerate both here and in the book but the articles above are just the tip of the iceberg when it came to their presence in Margate in the late 60s.

I have another article from the “Isle of Thanet Gazette” headed “The Sad Decline of Margate” in which a frequent visitor decries the deterioration of the town, choosing to spend his holiday in Bournemouth instead. Margate did have its advantage’s sometimes though, as you can see from the image of the lovely lady above. She was part of a Radio One road show that visited the town that summer. Shy old me asked beautiful young her if I might take a photo and to my complete surprise not only didn’t she call the police, she actually posed for me.

Jimmy Saville was furious. 

On a sadder note, the Beatles broke up in April of 1970. The end of an era and a miserable day for all concerned. No one ever heard from them again. I, however, recently purchased a vinyl copy of the “No. 1” album because I still really like their music.

My ongoing love affair with vinyl still knew no bounds and in 1970 I bought what would become my all-time favourite Beach Boys album, “Sunflower”. The version you see here featured their last Capitol single “Cottonfields”. It was a big hit in the UK although it didn’t make it on the track listing of the version released in America, but of course you knew that already. Look closely at the inner sleeve image and you can see it’s signed by Brian Wilson who autographed it for me in October of 1999. Now there’s a story, which I’ll save for another time.

I am anticipating delivery of a vinyl box set of four records very soon featuring “Sunflower” and the follow-up album “Surf’s Up”. Over fifty years later and I’m still listening to the Beatles and the Beach Boys, music I cherished as a teenager. Now that’s what I call dedication to the cause. Or derangement. I’ll let you make up your own mind on that one.

Join me in a couple of weeks for my take on some of the films and TV shows from 1970.

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When it comes to the year 1969 there’s not really that much to add to what’s in the book so just one entry for this year instead of two. In quick succession I picked up my exam certificates for the O levels I’d taken the year before as shown above, stayed on another year at school to retake my Maths and Physics O level exams in order to get into college, left school then went to college, and I had a proper date with a girl for the very first time.

Actually there is one other thing worth mentioning. If you want to know what a seventeen-year-old teenager looks like just after finding out his father isn’t his real dad then look no further than the image above. And dig those sideburns while you’re at it.

I’m on safer ground when it comes to the three things that I have relied on when the going gets tough, namely music, TV and films. I must have been busy with reality that year because I can only recall having been to the cinema about twelve times in all.

I have to say “McKenna’s Gold” is probably one of the worst Westerns I’ve ever seen but the swimming sequence featuring Julie ‘Catwoman’ Newmar still resonates after all these years. No images from that bit I’m afraid. I don’t want to leave myself open to being cancelled for objectifying the female form (there’s loads of photos on Google though).

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No escaping Clint Eastwood movies now that he’d left “Rawhide” well and truly behind him, and I saw these two within a couple of weeks of each other. “Coogan’s Bluff” inspired the TV series “McCloud” whilst “Hang ‘Em High” was itself inspired by “The OxBow Incident”. Don’t say you never learn anything from this blog.

There’s cool, there’s real cool and then there’s Steve McQueen. The character he played in “Bullitt” appears to be so reluctant to indulge in conversation you wonder at times if there’s not actually something wrong with him but, in a strange way, even that’s cool too. Best car chase ever – until “The French Connection” a few years later.

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“The Bridge at Remagen” was a surprisingly good film, even if it did suffer from that annoying thing actors do when playing a Nazi, namely speaking English with what they think passes for a German accent. As for “The Virgin Soldiers”, I thought the book was much better than the film but I’m sure it had its moments, even if I can’t’ quite remember any right now.

I think I must have been in a real bad mood at this point because I wasn’t a great fan of “Once Upon A Time in the West” when it was first released. I thought the opening sequence was probably the best part of the film but then I felt the story kind of meandered along for another two-and-a-half hours and I lost interest. Over the years of course it has gained classic cult status but there’s still a little voice inside my head that maintains “The Good the Bad and the Ugly” is the best of the Leone Westerns. Great Morricone soundtrack though.

“Where’s Jack?” is a landmark film for me as it was the first time I accompanied a young lady to the cinema. I was so overjoyed at the thought of finally finding myself in the company of a real girl in the dimly lit back row of Dreamland cinema I even paid for her ticket. The downside was that the film starred Tommy Steele but, seeing as I had absolutely no interest in what was happening on the screen, which was a big first for me, that’s kind of a moot point.

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“Star Trek” was the most feted TV show of the year and no matter what anyone else thinks, the original version was most definitely the best of the bunch. Accept no substitute. I loved it from the very first episode I saw which was entitled “Where No Man Has Gone Before”. I loved it so much I bought the Bantam fotonovel which was published ten years later.

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Two comedy shows debuted in 1969, both notorious for different reasons. The first was “Curry and Chips”, which I write about in the book, and “Monty Python”, the first series of which went way over my head, meaning I probably wasn’t aligned with the zeitgeist of the late 1960s at that point in time.

I did, however, like “Up Pompeii” with Frankie Howard. Can’t imagine why though. 

PS If I’m not mistaken I think the lady in the photo above is Valerie Leon and I ended up getting her autograph nearly thirty years later.  You know, life really is strange at times.

By the way, apologies for the late posting but there’s a pandemic on at the moment in case you haven’t noticed. Everyone else appears to be using that as an excuse so now it’s my turn. See you again (hopefully) in a couple of weeks.

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Sex finally reared its ugly head in the town of Margate in 1968 – cinematically speaking anyway. The quartet of titles as shown above provided enough chatter amongst our age group on the subject to last a lifetime. In fact, me and a former school mate still reminisce about the opening credits to “Barbarella” in which Jane Fonda disrobes whilst floating in zero gravity. That’s how pathetic we get in our old age – and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I didn’t realise it at the time but “The War Wagon” turned out to be the last John Wayne film I knowingly went to the cinema to see for quite a number of years, eight to be exact. Our generation were starting to get a bit tired of Wayne’s political views, especially when it came to the Vietnam war, so the old dinosaur was out and in came the likes of Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford to overturn the status quo. This meant that I missed out on a couple of real classic JW Westerns including “True Grit” and “The Cowboys” but I did catch “The Shootist” in a local fleapit in London in 1976, which turned out to be his last film and one of his best.

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Here are a few random films I saw in 1968. I got to see “Custer of the West” on a Cinerama screen in Birmingham when I went to visit my old school mate Les, and of course “Planet of the Apes” turned out to be a real classic.

“The Good the Bad and the Ugly” was without doubt the best Western of the year even if, the first time I saw it, I remember thinking “for Christ’s sake get on with it and start shooting each other” during the face-off at Sad Hill cemetery between Clint, Lee Van Cleef and Eli Wallach at the end. Later on of course I realised it’s a film set to the brilliant music by Ennio Morricone, and not the other way around.

Finally, on the subject of movies, a quick mention for this weird double bill featuring “The Wild One”, an early Marlon Brando effort that had been banned from the UK for fifteen years. Most of us couldn’t figure out what the problem was. You’d get to see more violence of a Saturday night along Margate seafront than you saw in the whole of the film, and you didn’t have to pay to watch it either.

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As mentioned in the book, the final episode of the TV series “The Prisoner” gifted confused viewers with another classic WTF moment in the vein of the Beatles “Magical Mystery Tour” film. I’m still not sure what happened in the end to Patrick McGoohan’s character, and life’s getting a bit too short these days to try and figure it out.

“The Time Tunnel”, yet another Irwin Allen TV sci-fi production, could be fairly entertaining at times but they really should have got someone to work out why the tunnel delivered James Darren and Robert Colbert nearly every week into a situation just prior to a disastrous historical event. In one of the early episodes they ended up on the Titanic just before it hit the iceberg, but too late to catch Leo and Kate copping off with each other in the cargo hold.

I was going to post something on what I believe was the last Allen TV show, “Land of the Giants” but to be honest I only watched one episode and I didn’t think it was any good. I was now a typical teenager – judgemental, opinionated and armed with the attention span of a gnat.

Only four more years to go before I get to the end of this series of tie-in blogs for “The Maynards of Margate”. There’s lots to do in our new house so I’m going to post bi-weekly from now on. Even I’m getting bored talking about myself all the time.

See you again soon.

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.

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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?

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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.

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This was the year I nearly threw up in the cinema after witnessing Gene Hackman crawling around in the dirt with half his head blown off in “Bonnie and Clyde”. Little did I know that the demise of the two main characters at the end of the film would knock that into a cocked hat, thus opening the gates to a welter of violence and onscreen mayhem and gore that has influenced film to this day.

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Ironically it was the first and second offerings in Sergio Leone’s Dollar trilogy that attracted just as much attention as “B&C”, ironic in that “A Fistful of Dollars” and “For a Few Dollars More” had actually been made in 1964 and 1965 respectively but their release outside of Italy was delayed due to a lawsuit brought by Japanese film director Akiro Kurosawa. Apparently Akiro felt somewhat aggrieved that Leone had nicked the plot for the first Dollar film from Kurosawa’s Samurai movie “Yojimbo”, sued accordingly and walked away with many a fistful of Yen of his own in the process.

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Two classic Hollywood Westerns hit the screen in the same year, “El Dorado”, which is to all intents and purposes a reimagining of “Rio Bravo” and “Hombre”, in which Paul Newman took the lead role whilst Richard Boone stole the film as the villain of the piece.

Judging by Sean Connery’s detached performance in his (supposedly) last Bond outing, “You Only Live Twice”, it’s fairly obvious he wanted out by this point. Not the best of the early 007 films but if you want your lethal cocktail of cinematic sex and violence served shaken and stirred then this one did the job.

Talking of shaken and stirred, the sight of Raquel Welch in a figure hugging outfit floating across the giant screen in Dreamland cinema was enough to wish you were one of the antibodies that attached themselves to her as she and her fellow voyagers attempt to operate on someone from the inside. And no, I am not on drugs as I write this. I liked the film so much I even bought the Dell comic tie-in, although it seems to have gone missing during our recent house move. It’s no doubt totally worthless but when you lose something you’ve managed to keep hold of for over half a century it makes you realise you’re probably a hoarder and you need psychiatric help.

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“The Sand Pebbles” is not exactly one of my favourite films for reasons I explain in more detail in the book, but a few weeks later I got to see one of the best double movie bills ever released, “The Great Escape” and ‘633 Squadron”. It was only upon seeing these films on the same program together that I realised wee little Scottish actor Angus Lennie appeared in both, hence the suggestion the double bill should have been released under the title “The Angus Lennie Story”.

I know this is tantamount to blasphemy for all of those Christopher Nolan followers out there but I personally feel there’s a case to be made that the spinoff movie from the “Batman” TV show with Adam West in the title might actually be the best film ever made about the Dark Knight. Made me laugh anyway.

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Turning to the subject of TV our Sunday afternoon viewing was somewhat enlivened by an American WW II show called “Garrisons Gorillas”. Supposedly inspired by the film “The Dirty Dozen”, the action-packed series followed the exploits of a bunch of criminals who sneak behind enemy lines in order to kill as many Nazis as possible and in the process add grist to the mill that America won the war all on their own. One of the characters was played by English actor Christopher Carey as a sop to the UK audience and, despite being totally absurd, I have to admit I really liked it.

I know the Beatles are still held in the highest regard by a lot of my generation even though the band broke up over fifty years ago but even the most devoted fan must have had a WTF moment after the “Magical Mystery Tour” film was shown on the BBC on Boxing Day 1967. I know I did and, even though some of the songs went a long way towards salvaging the project as a whole, it was still a bit of a disappointment to the legions of Beatles followers at the time. I tried watching it again recently but if I’m honest I much prefer “A Hard Day’s Night”.

Sorry to end on a bit of a bum note but I’ve got a cold right now and I can just about see out of one eye while I’m typing this. See you next week (hopefully).

First of all apologies for the lateness of this blog which I intended to write a few weeks ago but it turned out that moving house was even more traumatic than even I thought it was going to be. Never again.

I’m not posting this photo of me at the age of 15 because I’m proud of it or something – would you be? No, the reason it’s here is because I noticed something strange about the image – apart from the obvious – that I wanted to share with my faithful followers. As you can see there’s a mole on my left cheek which, rather worryingly, has now totally disappeared and moved across to the exact same position on the right side of my face instead. I noticed it whilst I was looking in the mirror the other day, something I try to avoid as much as possible at my age. Either it’s a roving mole of some kind or the photo is inverted. Or maybe I’m inverted. If such a thing is possible. Anyway, on with the show.

Our art teacher took the class down to Margate Harbour one day and I sketched a small boat lying on the mud as shown above. This was the time he pointed out to us about how the skyline had been forever ruined by the building of Arlington Flats along the seafront. But back to me. I was so impressed by my artistry that I started to take more of an interest in drawing, starting with the image you see below:

What can I say? You draw what you know, right? Emboldened by this hitherto unknown talent of mine I started to push the boundaries a bit, which is what all great artists do I suppose. I think I pushed a bit too much though.

Should you ever want to know what goes on in the mind of an ever-so-slightly disturbed fifteen-year-old school boy then look no further than this.

I’d hate to think what’s lurking behind that door on the right. Maybe these characters as shown below?

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Our form teacher for the 4th year, Frank Skinner, known as Mr. Shaw in the book, asked the class to produce an original story as part of an English project. As you can see from the so-called cover art for my effort entitled “The Family Tree” (that’s real wallpaper by the way – no expense spared) I resorted to writing something in my favourite genre when producing my contribution, prompting Skinner to comment in my school report that “Stephen’s imagination tends to be sombre”. No kidding. The only downside to this was that I cut up some of my monster mags in order to use the images you see on the front and back cover of my horror tale which, let’s admit, was pretty bloody stupid. The story wasn’t much better either.

So far we’ve covered my burgeoning interests in drawing and writing but my overwhelming ambition at this point in my life was to finally get myself a proper snog with a girl. As luck would have it my school friend Ray Atkins (not his real name) invited me, Les and another kid called Pete over to where Ray and his family ran their hotel on the outskirts of Birchington. It was there one evening in August / September of 1967 that I finally got my wish, playing spin the bottle with Ron’s younger sister and her two girl friends, all of whom I naturally fell in love with. It was a very special memory that stayed with me for many years, to the point that whenever I went down to visit my relatives in Margate I’d get a spontaneous erection every time I drove past the hotel (is that what they call too much information?).

Anyway, happy days as they say.

I genuinely have no memory as to the presents I may have received for Christmas 1967 but I’m betting the album above figured in there somewhere. And unbelievably the Beach Boys are still going in one form or another. Carl Wilson (second from the left) and Dennis Wilson (second from the right) have sadly gone to that great recording studio in the sky. Al Jardine (extreme right) went solo, Mike Love (middle) now tours as the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson (extreme left) went to Mars on an LSD trip not too long after the album cover photo was taken and missed the last flight back.

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I really should stop rabbiting on about the Beach Boys and acknowledge the release in 1967 of a record by our very own British idols, the Beatles, that some people consider to be the best album ever made. This is the actual copy of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” I bought upon its release. Naturally I cut out the inserts that came with the LP which now drastically reduces the value of the album should I ever want to sell it. Which I don’t.

I’ll be doing a part two on 1967 in a week or two as I know how anxious you all are to read about some of the movies and TV shows I got to see back in the day. Don’t worry though. Only a few more blogs to go on the subject of my book “The Maynard’s of Margate” and it will all be over. Promise.