Saturday 28 December 1963
Sixteen people were taken to hospital last night after twelve vehicles crashed in thick fog on the M1, near Hemel Hempstead. One ambulance-man said later, “It was shocking to see the disregard passing motorists were showing. Some were doing quite 50 mph.” Mr Gordon Wilcox, a motorist, said, “It was like something from an ‘X’ film. People were groaning from their injuries and vehicles were ablaze.”
The mystery of the snakes that are terrorising the town of Maidstone, Kent, deepened last night. The remains of pythons or boa constrictors have been found in eight Maidstone homes. Now people fear that other snakes may be hibernating in the area.
Mr and Mrs Jack Smith were driving home from a party in Exmouth, Devon when they saw a penguin. They turned around to double-check and discovered that the penguin was accompanied by a cat.
The Duke of Edinburgh and five other “guns” killed 200 pheasants yesterday on the Royal Estate at Sandringham. There will be another shoot today.
Kalanag, the last of the great stage illusionists, has died. He was a professional magician for 42 years. His magic library of 20,000 books is the largest in the world. Mr Francis White, President of the Magic Circle, said, “His death marks the end of an era.”
Mrs Barbara Daly, wife of John Thomas Daly, one of the accused in the Great Train Robbery case, has given birth to a baby boy.
Football. Forty-eight hours after the Boxing Day games, the fixtures will be reversed and the teams will play each other again. There are fears that some players will be out for “revenge” and will deliberately injure their opponents. There is a suggestion that these reverse fixtures at Christmas should be scrapped because they have a history of causing trouble.
Television highlights: Dr Who – The Survivors. That Was The Year That Was – final fling with David Frost and Co. The Avengers – Dressed to Kill.
Radio highlights: Association Football Summaries. Take Your Partners.
Weather: mostly cloudy with coastal and hill fog. Outlook – rain or drizzle. 9c, 48f.
Sunday 29 December 1963
Where did The Beat come from? In racing terms you might say it was skiffle out of jazz. It surged up out of the art colleges and was grabbed by the kids who were lost and lonely. They heard The Beat and suddenly they belonged. They were welded into a great freemasonry that had no barriers of class, money or speech. And people in the know say that it has not even reached its peak.
Women in Stroud, Gloucestershire have been invited to visit the local police station and claim the 186 items of women’s clothing that are on display – bras, panties, petticoats and nightdresses. The items were all stolen from washing lines in the district.
“Who is the greatest menace on the roads today? The safety-belt car driver. Eighty percent of them think that when they are strapped behind their wheels nothing can happen to them. How false!” – G Gooday, Enfield, Middlesex.
An engineer, Mr Robinson, inspected a hole in Normandy, Surrey, and drove into it. He was unhurt, but it took four men to get him and his car back on the road.
Doctors are warning of outbreaks of typhoid in South-East Essex.
More was spent on records in Britain in 1963 than ever before. The figure – £33,000,000, up £5,500,000 on last year. Some 80,000,000 discs were pressed, a quarter of them long-players. And the ten number one hits of 1963 were all home-grown.
Listen out for the Aces. They might do for Hull what the Beatles have done for Liverpool.
Football Results: First Division – Aston Villa 2 Wolves 2, Birmingham 1 Arsenal 4, Blackburn 1 West Ham 3, Ipswich 4 Fulham 2, Manchester United 5 Burnley 1, Spurs 0 West Bromwich Albion 2. Top three – Blackburn, Spurs, Liverpool.
Television highlights: No Star on the Way Back – Contemporary Nativity. Sunday Night at the London Palladium – all-star show organised by the Stars Organisation for Spastics. Play – One Night of the Year with Kenneth Cope and Warren Mitchell.
Radio highlights: The Countryside in December. The Trigger – serial.
Weather: fog patches, sunny spells later.
Monday 30 December 1963
An inquiry into the Christmas road death toll of 120 is anticipated. It’s suspected that many of these deaths were due to drivers being incapacitated by alcohol. The use of “breathalyser” drunkenness detectors is a popular proposal. However, Transport Minister Ernest Marples has been reluctant to implement road safety measures in the past.
Charlie Ashby, 73, was trying to remove a jackdaw’s nest from a neighbour’s chimney when he got stuck. Neighbours pulled Mr Ashby’s ankles, but they could not free him, so they called the fire brigade. The Bromley brigade arrived, dismantled part of the chimney and freed Mr Ashby. The jackdaw’s nest remains in place.
A family was covered in soot in Oldham, Lancashire when a balloon got stuck in a chimney pot. A fireman climbed on to the roof and burst the balloon.
At a restaurant in Reading, a man placed his thumb in a radiator and it got stuck. After an hour, police and firemen freed him.
A prediction for 1964: bedrooms will become more feminine with four-poster beds and brass bedsteads. Also for 1964, loose covers in flecked stretch fabric that will fit any armchair.
Hip words for 1964. Thread – dress. Short – car. Boss short – big car. Crumb-crusher – child. To be put down – to be insulted. To be shot through the grease – to be made a fool of. To jump salty – to get angry.
Football: In Division Two, the top of the table clash between Sunderland and Leeds United was a brutal affair. Two forwards kicked each other while another kicked an opponent in the back. A Sunderland player punched a Leeds forward. Two rugby scrimmages broke out in midfield. A Sunderland forward was kicked to the floor by a Leeds defender. A Leeds forward was punched in the face. Sunderland won the match 2 – 0.
Television highlights: The Hoot’nanny Show. Goldenhair – film from Czechoslovakia. Play of the Week – Three Roads to Rome with Deborah Kerr.
Radio highlights: Let’s Get Away From it All. The Pop Art of Soccer.
Weather: sunny then rain. Outlook – rain then sunny. 8c, 46f
Tuesday 31 December 1963
The gayest New Year Ball in London tonight will be at the Royal Albert Hall where stars of stage, screen and television will join thousands of revellers in a six hour non-stop greeting to 1964. The stars include Billy J Kramer, Kathy Kirby and Sid Phillips and his band. Tickets from 30s each.
1963 was a year of industrial peace. In the first eleven months just over 1,500,000 working days were lost because of stoppages – the lowest total for ten years. Over the same period last year 5,750,000 working days were lost. The lost time equates to only 29 minutes per worker in Britain.
Mr and Mrs Average Briton are spending more and more. The weekly budget stands at £18 7s 6d a week. The previous budget stood at £17 0s 6 1/2d. The biggest single item – £1 2s 3 1/2d is spent on cigarettes and tobacco.
A study of 90,000 patients who were first taken into mental hospitals in England and Wales during 1954 and 1955 shows that bachelors had the highest admission rate.
An outbreak of typhoid has been traced to a 93 year old woman who has been carrying the infection since 1917. Experts believe that between two and five percent of people who catch the disease become carriers. Medical checks are complicated because not all carriers develop typhoid.
“Giant rats” – coypus – are on the run in London. Hooligans released them from London Zoo. The coypus have been spotted in Regents Canal, where conditions are ideal for them to breed.
Nona Gaprindashvili, 21 from Georgia, is the first woman ever to qualify to compete with men at the Hastings International Chess Congress. Nona, the world’s woman chess champion, said, “Oh, I love chess. It is the most important thing in my life. Far more important than boyfriends and romance. Chess is my life. I shan’t be thinking about husbands and babies for a long time yet.”
Television highlights: This Wonderful World. A New Year Party from Scotland with Andy Stewart. Last Programme: At the Turn of the Year – Hope.
Radio highlights: Big Ben – Welcome to the New Year. Music For Your Party.
Weather: sunny periods. Outlook – changeable. 7c, 45f.
Wednesday 1 January 1964
Using a sack and an umbrella, John Watson and Ken Brightwell captured two of the coypus that had escaped from London Zoo. They captured the coypus when someone spotted the 2 foot long rat-like animal running along a girder 20 feet above a canal at Maida Vale. A third coypus is still on the loose.
Racing driver Roy John James’ fingerprints were found on a cat’s food dish at the Great Train Robbers’ hideout, Leatherslade Farm, a court was told yesterday. The fingerprints of antiques dealer John Thomas Daly were also found, on a Monopoly game. Eighteen other men and women will also face trial in connection with the robbery.
Police have warned that a highly poisonous Indian plant has been found growing in Canterbury, Kent.
Cricket captain Frank Worrell, whose West Indies team brought verve and gaiety to last summer’s Test matches in England, was knighted in the New Year’s Honours List. Frank, his men and their supporters lifted cricket out of the doldrums with their gay performances in 1963.
Ron Grainer, the Australian composer who has written theme music for a number of television programmes, is leaving Britain for a villa in Lisbon. Working under artificial light has affected his eyes and a specialist has recommended that he should work in bright sunlight.
The Beatles won Melody Maker’s best LP of the year award with Please, Please Me. They also won the single of the year with From Me to You.
Charlie Chaplin’s 38 year old film The Gold Rush won Christmas’ biggest TV audience the BBC claimed last night. The film – the first Chaplin has allowed to be shown in full on TV – was seen by 20,600,000 viewers. The BBC also claimed that during 11am and 11pm on Christmas Day 80 out of 100 viewers watched their programmes, the highest number since the start of the ITV network.
Television highlights: International Ski Jumping from Bavaria. New Year’s Day Concert from Vienna. Top of the Pops – new pop music show.
Radio highlights: Revolution, Change and Marxism. Old Prison Letters.
Weather: mainly dry, sunny intervals, mild. Outlook – mild, showery, sunny intervals. 9c, 48f.
Thursday 2 January 1964
A firebug is on the loose in the West Country. Over the past eighteen months he has raided at least twenty-four top floor flats, robbed them and set them ablaze. The raids have been in Exeter, Newton Abbot, Plymouth, Weymouth, Dorchester, Gloucester, Exmouth and Clevedon. The firebug is about 5 foot 8 inches tall, between 45 and 50, has receding brown hair and wears horn-rimmed glasses.
Hopes of a breakthrough in the dispute that has closed the giant Port Talbot steelworks crashed last night. A union official said, “The company has rebuffed our gesture. We are back where we started.” The union wants a pay increase, justified by the company’s profits.
Cadbury’s chocolate is to cost more from Monday. General increases include an extra penny for the quarter-pound bar (now 1s 2d), and 3d on a box of Milk Tray (now 3s 6d). A spokesman for Cadbury’s said, “Practically everything you can think of has gone up. We staved off putting up our prices for as long as we could.”
After a bumper 1963 in Discland, what will happen in 1964? We asked Parlophone boss George Martin, the man who produces all the Beatles’ hits. He said, “I don’t think there will be much of a change. The Beat mood will continue and spread more widely. The trend towards Beat will become part and parcel of the music scene. At the same time, there will still be the good ballads. There will be more groups too, but only the good ones will break through.”
Everton, the “soccer millionaires”, whose fans are often accused of unruly conduct, have had their headquarters smashed up – by a gang of hooligans. In the New Year’s Eve raid, the hooligans wrecked the players’ and trainers’ rooms causing £1,000 worth of damage. Everton, in an effort to beat the hooligans, made British soccer history by putting up special barriers behind each goal.
Football Results: Scottish First Division – Celtic 0 Rangers 1, Dundee 1 Aberdeen 4, Hibernian 1 Hearts 1, St Johnstone 2 Dundee United 2, St Mirren 1 Kilmarnock 3.
In the 3.15 at Liverpool, Tear Gas beat Saucy Song by a short head.
Television highlights: Tonight with Cliff Michelmore. Canada Playdate – The Looking Glass World, science drama. Road Works Report.
Radio highlights: The Authorship of Shakespeare. The Novel Today.
Weather: cloudy and mild. Outlook – no change. 9c, 48f
Friday 3 January 1964
A team of psychologists will be employed by Associated TeleVision to answer questions such as: should TV heroes have mistresses? Should heroines be blondes or brunettes? The answers will help programme makers to give viewers what they really want.
Scientists have been trying out plastic bags that can be used to take a sample of breath from drivers suspected of having had too much to drink. Drivers would be asked to breathe into one of the bags. The breath would then be analysed by a breathalyser – an instrument that measures the amount of alcohol in the breath.
The Rev Anthony Hart-Synnot, an Old Etonian, has been accused of removing lead from the vicarage roof, thus causing wilful and malicious damage. The vicar explained that he turned his vicarage into a refuge for homeless families. Later, he wanted to evict them, but they refused to move out, so he instructed builders to remove the lead from the roof.
Best buys this week: apricots, plumbs, peaches and indoor rhubarb. Tomatoes, cucumbers and lettuce are also good value. Vegetables are cheap. New Zealand lamb is currently cheaper than English. Best fish buys are cod, haddock, plaice and sprats.
Ranks, who run the Odeon and Gaumont cinemas, are to raise their admission prices. The increases will affect 190 out of 390 Rank cinemas. Granada are also putting up their prices to 2s 9d, 3s 9d and 4s 9d. A spokesman for ABC (280 cinemas) said, “We have no plans to raise our prices.”
Exhibitions: camping at Olympia, 3 – 11 January.
More than 46,000 people bought television licences last November, bringing the total to 12,777,635.
Television highlights: Gala Performance – music, opera and ballet. It’s Dark Outside – new thriller series. Comedy Playhouse – The Mate Market with Lance Percival.
Radio highlights: German for Beginners. Readings on Record.
Weather: cloudy, dry. Outlook – cloudy, mainly dry. 4c, 39f.
Available for order and pre-order, my Swinging Sixties Mystery Series
https://books2read.com/u/bMqNPG
Hannah Howe 