Queue for the loo

 Old Trolleybuses finding a subsequent life as public toilets were not that unusual. The Borough Council of Epsom & Ewell had several ex-Huddersfield Karriers and here is one at the Derby on 2 June 1965. Were the facilities for the gentlemen this exotic, I wonder?

More Vargas

Another pin up from the brush of Alberto Vargas (1896-1982), this from Playboy magazine, January 1965.

Playmates of '64

A review of the previous year's Playmates, as featured in Playboy magazine, January 1965.

Stocking Parade

A little photo-feature from Stocking Parade, dating from 1965, featuring Wilma Evans. There were loads of  publications like this in the 1950s/1960s, all quite innocent when compared with the more explicit 'top shelf' magazines that became available from the 1970s and which effectively killed them off. They are quite collectable now and can command good prices. They are now often advertised as being of 'Fetish interest'; it has been suggested that a predilection for stockings was often formed when a young child would see up his mothers skirt whilst crawling along the floor. I can well remember Miss Eccles, a drama teacher at our grammar school in the late-1960s, who would have us naively adopting positions on the floor in the hall while she moved amongst us.........

Coaching with Midland Red

An Advert for Midland Red coach tours and cruises, at it appeared in the summer 1952 edition of the ABC Coach Guide. The vehicle illustrated is C1 class coach 3302, the chassis being built by the company (BMMO) and bodied by Duple.

Moving forward some thirteen years, here is an advert for Midland Red's Birmingham to London express service via the M1 motorway, introduced in 1959. The coach here is an all-BMMO product, the CM5 class. This appeared on the rear of Ian Allan's British Bus Fleets - 15: Midland Red, tenth edition, 1965.

Welcome to Bournemouth

These two illustrations provided the frontispiece to official guides to Bournemouth published in 1935 and 1965. The top view was entitled Bathing from the Pier, and appears to be a of a smaller area especially built lower down for that activity. One-piece swimsuits are certainly the fashion!

The lower view is, well, self explanatory. I'm not sure whether as a nine year-old, I would have been interested in the girls on the beach, although I certainly appreciated singer Susan Maughan when she appeared with Morcambe & Wise at the Winter Gardens Theatre the following summer! My 1965 holiday would have included riding on the yellow Corporation trolleybuses and serious train-watching, as most services through Bournemouth then were still steam-hauled. An evening treat would be a drive through the town's illuminations in Uncle Billy's Ford Consul. Now, where's my time machine.........

The sobering thought is that the carefree group from 1935 have probably all died and that the game gals from 1965 are all now pensioners!

What glamour shoots are really like.........

We wish.

From High Heels, July 1965

San Ferry Ann

San Ferry Ann is a short (55 minute) British silent film made in 1965, involving a motley collection of holidaymakers let loose on an unsuspecting Calais for the weekend. Amongst the crew are Mum (Joan Sims), dad (David Lodge), grandma (Lynne Carol - Martha Longhurst in Coronation Street) and grandad (Wilfred Brambell), who arrive in a Bedford CA caravan, whilst a pair of lovers, off for a romantic sojourn, are played by Rodney Bewes (by this time a Likely Lad) and Catherine Feller, pitching up in and old MG and never leaving the hotel. Two hitchhikers are wiggling Barbara Windsor and accident-prone Ronnie Stevens, who had played the drunk in Carry on Cruising three years previously. Other well-known faces to turn up include Warren Mitchell as a waiter, Fred Emney as a Frenchman with a comedy plaster-cast on this foot, Hugh Paddick, Ron Moody and the marvelous Graham Stark as a bemused Gendarme.

Plenty of stereotypical behaviour ensues; mum and dad get drunk, they can't read the signs nor speak the language, and are 'embarrassed Brits abroad' on the beach, whilst Ron Moody, as a former German soldier, forms an unlikely friendship with ex-Tommy Wilfred Brambell. Oh, and yes, there is an onion-seller in a beret on a bike and a smattering of sexy french girls, one of whom 'entices' Wilfred Brambell into her little war museum, very much under false pretences.......

At the very end of the film, we see our hitchhikers heading home to blighty. Barbara Windsor uses her obvious charms to thumb a lift in a passing Peugeot 404 (leaving her companion behind a hedge having a wee). He has the last laugh however, cadging a lift with a pretty girl in an MGB, passing the Peugeot with it's bonnet up.

Not a bad little film, perhaps a little long, but plenty of smiles along the way, if not many actual laugh-out-loud moments. There is much for the car enthusiast to savour, lots of French classics, not to mention the array of British motors that frequently crop up, and of course the British comic actors featured are always good value. My copy came as a triple DVD pack along with Simon Simon and A Home of your Own, both of which I will review in due course, all for £4.99 at our local branch of Works.