1963

1963

Gerry and the Pacemakers performing at the Cavern Club, early 1960s.

Gerry and the Pacemakers spent eleven weeks at number one in 1963 – with How Do You Do It?, I Like It, and You’ll Never Walk Alone. Only the Beatles spent longer at number one in 1963 – seventeen weeks with Please Please Me, From Me to You, She Loves You, and I Want to Hold Your Hand.

Dr Who was commissioned by Canadian-born Sydney Newman, the BBC’s head of drama. He said, “I found this country to be somewhat class-ridden. Television dramas were usually adaptations of stage plays, and invariably about the upper-classes. My approach was to cater for the people who were buying low-cost things like soap every day, The ordinary bloke. I said, ‘Damn the upper-classes, they don’t even own televisions!’”

***

Cricket – the English class system at play.

In the early 1960s, the distinction between “Gentlemen” – amateurs -and “Players” – professionals – was still firmly in place. Gentlemen and Players on the same team would enter the field of play through different gates, dine in different dining rooms, change in different changing rooms, and stay in different hotels when playing away fixtures. 

The Gentlemen often had lucrative jobs in the City and received expenses for playing cricket. England off-spinner Jim Laker, a professional, famously said that he was thinking of becoming an amateur. When asked, why? he replied, “Because I’d earn more money that way.”

On 31 January 1963 – a year of significant social change in Britain – the MCC abolished the distinction between amateur and professional players. All first-class cricketers became nominally professional, or effectively “Players”.

***

Baby, you can drive my car (but maybe you shouldn’t)…

Professor Colin Buchanan in 1963 on road travel, “We are nourishing at immense cost a monster of great potential destructiveness. And yet we love him dearly.”