1973 was really a significant year for me. It was my first record buying year and the year I left school and for this week I thought I’d have another look back in the dusty avenues of my memory and see what was happening back then.
For Christmas the previous year my mother had given my brother and me a shared present. It was a portable stereo record player. At the time neither myself nor my brother were that interested in the pop charts. The first album I bought was a collection of TV theme tunes by composer John Barry. Barry wrote a number of famous tunes for both TV and the cinema. He is probably best remembered for a tune he didn’t write, the James Bond theme tune. There was actually quite a controversy over the authorship of the tune. Monty Norman is credited as the writer of the music although it was John Barry’s jazz arrangement of the theme that most people are familiar with.
Monty Norman won two libel actions against publishers for claiming that Barry wrote the theme, most recently against The Sunday Times in 2001.
The theme is used in the first Bond film Dr No and then in all the subsequent 007 films with varying different arrangements reflecting the musical tastes of the times in which the films were made. In Daniel Craig’s first Bond film Casino Royale, the theme isn’t heard until the very end of the film.
The title track from the album is the theme from The Persuaders, a TV show starring future James Bond, Roger Moore and Tony Curtis. The pair played Lord Brett Sinclair and US businessman Danny Wilde who are recruited by a retired judge to fight crime. Tony Curtis drove my favourite car of all time in the series, a Ferrari Dino 246 GT. Price tag today, anything between £500,000 to a million.
In 1973 Roger Moore made his debut as James Bond in Live and Let Die. My brother and I went to see it at the cinema. He enjoyed it, but as much as I’ve always loved Roger, I wasn’t keen on his Bond films. The film’s theme song was written and performed by Paul McCartney and Wings.
What else was on TV in 1973? The pilot episode of Porridge starring Ronnie Barker was first shown on BBC1. Another great comedy series making its TV debut was Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads. The series was in the news a few years ago when Rodney Bewes who played Bob sadly passed away. He had wanted to appear in a follow up to the series set in the present day with the two ‘likely lads’ as old men. Co-star James Bolam declined and in fact there was a lot of talk in the media about a falling out between the two and the pair never speaking to each other again.
Bewes died in 2017 and Bolam denied any feud telling BBC Radio, “This is what happens in acting; you work with people, you get to know them, you like them, we have a great time and the job finishes and you go off and it all starts again with other people and you can’t keep contact with everybody that you know.”.
Two series from the US that I was very fond of were MASH and Kung Fu.
MASH was a series based on a book and film about US army surgeons in Korea who worked in a mobile army hospital unit. Alan Alda played the wisecracking Hawkeye Pierce and the series ran for many years combining humour and drama in a most impressive way. It perhaps ran a few years longer than it should have done and the later episodes were not as good as the earlier ones, at least in my opinion.
Kung Fu was a cowboy western series with a twist. It wasn’t about gun slinging cowboys but about Kwai Chang Caine, a half American, half Chinese boy who is accepted into a Shaolin monastery in China and tutored in the arts of philosophy as well as martial arts. As a grown man, Caine is forced to flee to America. Cue some impressive slow-motion fights where Caine, played by David Carradine, wipes out numerous knife wielding and gun toting bad guys. Cue a load of flashback philosophising too. I loved it and looking over at my DVD shelf where I can see Kung Fu and MASH DVD boxsets; I suppose I’m still fond of those shows today.
In 1973 I bought my first vinyl singles. They were Banks of the Ohio and What is Life both sung by Olivia Newton John. I got them for half price each as they were no longer in the charts, 48 pence if I remember correctly; what a bargain! Later in the year I discovered Elton John and began buying his albums. Goodbye Yellow Brick Road was the first one I ever bought.
The poster that graced my bedroom wall back in 1973
My singles collection began to pile up as my interest in music flourished. My brother and I used to tape the weekly BBC Top Twenty and in the summer holidays we were glued to my combined radio and tape deck listening to the new chart which Johnny Walker played on a Tuesday lunchtime on Radio One.
My brother later became rather jealous of my singles collection and he saw an advert in one of those pop newspapers, New Musical Express or Rolling Stone perhaps, and bought a huge collection of ex jukebox records. We had a lot of fun sorting through and playing them and we commenced what would be a lifetime of swapping records which would end up, months later of repeated scenes of me finding a record in his collection which I claimed was mine and he would counter ‘yes but I swapped that one for this one so it’s really mine!’
What was happening in the UK in 1973? Well, I vaguely remember the ‘cod wars’ which was a dispute between the UK and Iceland over fishing rights. The Royal Navy even sent frigates out to protect British vessels.
The UK joined the EEC, the forerunner of the European Union.
On the 26th March, Noel Coward died. He was in bed reading a book by one of his favourite authors, E Nesbit. I knew Noel was a great fan of Nesbit and I’m sure I had heard or read somewhere that when he died, he was reading his favourite of that author’s books, The Railway Children. A quick bit of internet research and I see that Noel died after reading Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle. Coward discovered the books as a child and revisited them many times during his life.
In 1973 President Nixon began his second term as US president and not long after he signed a peace accord with Vietnam, ending the Vietnam war.
Later in the year the Watergate scandal seemed to grow and grow and numerous people were fired by Nixon. Various others resigned and in July, it was revealed in senate hearings that Richard Nixon had installed a tape recording system in the White House.
The former Refuge Assurance building
On October 20 the so-called Saturday Night Massacre began. President Richard Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to dismiss Watergate Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox. Richardson refuses and resigns, along with Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus. Solicitor General Robert Bork, third in line at the Department of Justice, then fires Cox. The event started calls for Nixon’s impeachment. Nixon finally resigned in August, 1974.
In 1973 having left school clutching my four O levels I went for two interviews in Manchester city centre. One went really well. It was in a steel and glass modern office block with open plan working areas. I really liked the place and was hoping to get the job. Next, I had another interview at the Refuge Assurance Company on Oxford Road. The building and offices were very old fashioned and I didn’t really fancy working there. As it happened, Refuge offered me a job and I started work there a few weeks later.
I’ve always rather liked Kenneth Williams, the slightly over the top star of many a Carry On film as well as many radio comedy shows, however it did feel rather odd reading his private thoughts through his diary, although sometimes it was hard to keep track of what was happening. In a lot of the diary entries Kenneth refers to people by their initials rather than their name. The habit of using initials can be rather annoying as the editor will mention in one of the many footnotes that SB for instance refers to his friend and fellow performer Stanley Baxter. Later on, SB will turn up again and I find myself flipping back through the footnotes because I have forgotten who SB was.
Albert Speer was Hitler’s armaments minister and favoured architect and this book is made up of diary entries he had secretly smuggled out of Spandau prison where he was incarcerated for 20 years after the Second World War. Speer admits he was one of those people seduced by the power of Hitler’s personality. Looking back at Hitler today in grainy old black and white films, it is hard to understand how this strange and dour man who ranted and raved while speech making could seduce anyone, however many have testified to the startling power of his personality. I remember watching that interesting BBC documentary ‘The Nazis: A warning from History’. In one segment various people were interviewed who declared their youthful love for Hitler; a young girl who looked into his eyes and saw goodness or an old man who testified he had once seen the great side of Hitler. Sadly Hitler let them down and many more like them. Speer maintained that he knew nothing of concentration camps and the final solution but author Gitta Sereny claimed in her book Speer: His battle with Truth that Speer knew more than he let on.
This is the first of Michael Palin’s diaries and it’s been pretty interesting, especially being a fan of the TV show Monty Python. Anyway, Palin started his diaries soon after packing in smoking. Perhaps it was a way of helping get over his tobacco addiction, or perhaps not. The diaries also begin just as Monty Python, the comedy TV show, was starting and Palin mentions this in his introduction, his aim not to record the start of the ground breaking comedy but more to record things about his new family, his wife having recently given birth to their first child.
My diaries are definitely not for publishing. Looking back at them I notice that whenever something interesting has happened to me I have never written about it at the time, it has always been some time later when I have set down my feelings about the incident, whatever it may have been. The diary may be a confessional for some people but for me, as I said earlier, I started writing a diary as a way of making myself write when I couldn’t think of anything else to write about. In the early 2000’s I started writing a diary on my laptop, only to lose all my recollections from 2005 to 2006 when the file somehow became corrupted and refused to open. I was quite excited when the latest version of Microsoft Word came out because it gives you the option to repair a damaged file. Alas, that option would not work on my diary file. Then of course there are my big boxes of pre-2000 diaries. What shall I do with this lot I wonder? Will they add something to social history or grace the rubbish tip when I’m gone?
The first thing that comes to mind when one thinks about spies and espionage is probably James Bond, perhaps not the version of Bond as written by Ian Fleming but more the version given to us by the producers of the Bond films and portrayed by a succession of actors like Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore and latterly Daniel Craig.
I was probably first introduced to Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by the 1979 TV series starring Alec Guinness as George Smiley. In the story Smiley has retired but he is brought back into the intelligence fold after Lacon, the senior civil servant responsible for the service, asks him to investigate a story that has been brought to him by a missing agent named Ricki Tarr. The story concerns a ‘mole’ working for British Intelligence but passing information to the Soviet Union.
Kathy Burke plays Connie Sachs, an old Soviet watcher who became convinced Soviet diplomat Polyakov was a spy but her idea was rejected by the new Circus leaders but Smiley realises Connie might have been on to something. There are various suspects for the mole and they have all been given code names by Control; Tinker, Tailor, Poorman and so on. Control expected Prideux to come back with a code word but he did not and by the time he was exchanged and returned to the UK, the poorly Control had passed away.
I’ve always been a writer, even as a school kid I was writing stories and screenplays. I used to write scripts and do all the casting. Not sure whether Steve McQueen would have appreciated the roles I was planning for him though.
Well, more of the same really. I’ve begun to work on a follow up novel to Floating in Space but a novel is hard work and I sometimes wonder if I’m up to the task. Even my latest book, Timeline, which is just a collection of stories and blog posts was pretty hard work. The big problem is just me, being motivated and just getting myself geared up to work and write. Writing short stories is much more enjoyable and I’m really pleased at how my stories have turned out. A few are available for readers to download and enjoy, just click on the download link above.
I did read some news snippets over the previous weekend indicating Starmer was planning to resign on the Monday but I pretty much dismissed that as just a rumour without any background. Of course journalists have their contacts within government and certainly whoever started that rumour off must have had a good source because he was proved fully correct.
Those memories and other ones always come back every time I look at that picture. I happened to be looking at it this week as I scanned through some of my old posts looking for inspiration. The photo only took a moment to take but it’s nice to think about that house and all the happy times I had there. Not only that, my Grandmother and Grandfather lived there before us. They later moved to Prestatyn in Wales and my Mum and Dad took over the house when they were first married so it’s almost like a little bit of Higgins’ history, wrapped up in a picture.
Dad worked for Manchester Highways and his job title was, if I remember correctly, a flagger’s mate. His job was to lay pavement flags throughout Wythenshawe in south Manchester as well as to work tarmacing roads and repairing potholes. He rode to work on his bicycle every day of his working life armed only with his backpack containing his lunch; his sandwiches made by my mother and his brewcan. He used to use that brewcan even when he retired. Where he got the hot water from when working on the roads I don’t know unless he either went back to the Highways office or perhaps asked people where he was working to top up his brewcan.
In 1956 over in Liverpool, John Lennon formed a skiffle band called the Quarrymen. On the 6th July 1957 Lennon met Paul McCartney at the Woolton village fete and invited him to join the band. A year later in 1958 McCartney asked his school friend George Harrison to join but Lennon declined thinking the 15 year old George was too young. The two kept on at Lennon and he finally allowed George to join up after hearing him play guitar on the top deck of a bus.
Also in 1963 the Rolling Stones first single was a cover version of Chuck Berry’s Come On which rose to 21 in the UK singles chart. Their second single was a Lennon/McCartney song, I Wanna be Your Man.
Behind the scenes there was a good deal of mutual respect between the Stones and the Beatles. In fact, John Lennon and Paul McCartney had helped the Stones early in their career by giving them the song “I Wanna Be Your Man”.
As a band, the Beatles had come to the end of the line. There were arguments about the cinema film, the final album mixes, whose songs were to be included on the final album and all sorts of business issues. Allen Klein became the Beatles’ new manager but Paul McCartney wanted John Eastman, his new father in law. He was overruled by the other Beatles and Klein became their business manager and Eastman their lawyer.
This week I seem to have arrived at Friday with only two partly written posts and one of those is a longer version of a post I’ve done before. I wasn’t sure what to do and then I came up with an idea. What about merging the two posts together?
One day, round about the beginning of our last week there, the heat suddenly ramped up very quickly. It was almost as if some unseen hand had switched on the exterior central heating and things went from cold -we were wearing fleeces and had the inside heating on- to T-shirt and shorts weather, in fact most of the time it was too hot for even a T shirt.
In the evening we would usually have a barbecue, made much easier these days by our little ‘Camping Gaz’ gas barbecue which means we don’t have to wait yonks for the barbecue to get going or have to have it relit (a common occurrence when I’m in charge of the coals). Yes, our little gas barby clips together in minutes, the gas bottle is slapped into place and we are ready for those burgers.
Slow Days, Fast Company
Red Strike by Chris Ryan
The Fry Chronicles by Stephen Fry
The Man who Died Twice by Richard Osman
Amanda appeared in Coronation Street for a number of years but I’ve always known her as the girl who played Cleopatra in the Carry On film Carry on Cleo, you know, the one where Kenneth Williams says ‘Infamy, infamy; they’ve all got it in for me!’
A few years ago a worrying situation occurred when a random warning light appeared on the dashboard of our van. A quick check on Google showed it to be an engine fault. I started to worry that the engine might be ready to conk out so we went to a friendly garage and they plugged in their diagnostic equipment. They weren’t sure what the problem actually was so they suggested we go to a Ford garage as our van was of course, a Ford. The garage wouldn’t accept any money so we went off to a Ford garage and after what seemed like hours they emerged from their garage and told us not to worry, the engine was ok to drive but you owe us 150 Euros!
