Tag: Paul Deacon

Visiting Record & Tape Exchange With Paul Deacon, 29 April 1978

Chris Whippet / Music & Video Exchange, Notting Hill / CC BY-SA 2.0

My urge to write this posting emerged unexpectedly today (5 May 2016) after an emergency trip to the Retro Shop to try to find an appropriate pair of trousers for a 1960’s party.

Result: success, before you ask. Bright red, before you follow-up with the obvious next question.

The Retro Shop is at 28 Pembridge Road and the likely source of the party trousers was the basement of that shop. Despite its change of purpose within the “Exchange Empire”, I recognised the space immediately as the old bargain basement of Record and Tape Exchange. I inhabited that basement a great deal in my youth. Initially and several times subsequently, those visits were with Paul Deacon.

It was probably the pull of Record and Tape Exchange and my resulting familiarity with Notting Hill Gate that drew me to the neighbourhood in the late 1980s when ready to find my own place. With the benefit of hindsight, a most fortuitous draw.

But when did those visits start? I remember visits to The Slipped Disc in Clapham Junction with Paul perhaps as early as 1976 and certainly 1977. I’ll write that up separately once I have researched it.

But it isn’t until 1978 that I mention Record and Tape Exchange in my diary. 29 April 1978 to be precise.

Saturday 29 April – went to Jumbly’s, Record Exchange & Portobello with Paul.

Paul might remember what Jumbly’s is/was – I certainly don’t.

But I think our first attempt to go to Notting Hill Gate was a couple of weeks earlier during the school holidays. This entry from 12 April has got my brain ticking.

Wednesday 12 April – went out with Paul – bit of a disaster.

I have a vague memory of a day out with Paul when we were attempting to see Portobello and these second hand record shops we’d heard about, but somehow we got hopelessly lost and ended up wandering aimlessly around West Kensington and Olympia, until we returned home exhausted and unsatisfied. Paul might be able to fill in the details.

At the time I probably thought that any blame for such a “disaster” must rest with Paul. But nearly forty years subsequent experience of my personal geographical challenges suggests that the fault must have been at least as much, if not more, mine. The sat nav might have been invented just for me.

One more intriguing diary entry a few months later, but not (I believe) to do with Paul:

Saturday 29 July 1978 – Lazy day. Went to Record and Tape Exchange,

Very pithy. Doesn’t reveal much at all. I am pretty sure this must have been the day that I went up to Notting Hill Gate with a young lady known as Fuzz, with whom I’d had a gentle squeeze at Anil & Anita Biltoo’s party a couple of weeks before. This visit was especially memorable because it was a hot summer day and Fuzz became overwhelmed by the mustiness and dustiness of that basement, fainted, banged her head and needed to be revived by worried staff in the shop.

But apart from that, Mr Harris, how was your hot date?

I’m going to guess that I hadn’t been entirely straightforward with my parents (in particular my mum) with all the details of where I was going/had been and with whom, hence the pithy entry in the diary.

I am delighted to report that health and safety has improved a little at the 28 Pembridge Road basement in the past 38 years. Today it still had a musty, dusty atmosphere, but it was much mitigated by the back door being open to let in some fresh air.

Meanwhile, to support the comment below (triggered by a delightful Facebook message exchange with Paul) – here is the first page of my Record and Tape Exchange Transaction notes – there are pages and pages of them gathering dust in a file under the bed:

R&TE First Page 1978

Visiting The Slipped Disc in Clapham Junction With Paul Deacon, 10 August 1977

I have happy memories of visiting The Slipped Disc in Clapham Junction with Paul Deacon. I was reminded of those record hunts the other day, when circumstances took me to 28 Pembridge Road, which was Record and Tape Exchange in years gone by. I wrote up those 1978 record hunts here.

The Slipped Disc days were earlier. My trawl of my diary yields two diary references to visiting the Slipped Disc with Paul Deacon:

Wednesday 10 August 1977 – went to Slipped Disc with Paul. Bought 72 records for 72p

Then a couple of months later:

Saturday 8 October 1977 – went down to Slipped Disc with Paul. Bridge in evening

I probably need to provide some context to the mention of 72p. Back in 1977, my parents would give me 10p a week pocket money. Grandma Anne would give me 50p in a week when I saw her, but that was expected to be “saving money” for big things. (I’m still not sure what such big things are, which probably explains why I remain reluctant to buy things. Just in case they aren’t big enough.)

I could supplement my 10p a week “frittering money” by:

  • saving a bit from my school fare by walking some of the way;
  • winning at Kalooki against mum and Grandma Anne on a Sunday. On average, I tended to be up a few pence when we played, but of course I’d lose sometimes too;
  • in the summer I could occasionally earn a penny per weed to relieve dad of that particular arduous task.

In short, 72p back then was real money to me. But 72 discs was a real haul too.

Singles wasn’t really my thing, to be honest (more albums, me), but my goodness singles was Paul Deacon’s thing. I’m not sure how formative these Slipped Disc trips were in his astonishing career as a collector, archivist and DJ – Paul might choose to explain that for himself.

I mentioned in my discussion with Paul on the Record and Tape Exchange business, that I planned to write about The Slipped Disc this weekend and Paul said:

I look forward to revisiting the ‘Disc. Here’s a comment online that resonates. He mentions Melodisc. We picked loads between us didn’t we?

Click here for that Disc Deletion/Slipped Disc comment Paul mentions.

Sadly, not all of my Slipped Disc purchases seem to have made it to my log and/or collection. Only 34 Slipped Disc ones are catalogued and that must cover several visits.

I might just have a box of uncatalogued singles somewhere or they might not have made it from the house. I’ll have a look in the flat, but I don’t hold much hope. For example, what became of my copy of Bulgarian Betrothal by…whoever on earth did Bulgarian Betrothal? Most of those that didn’t make it were probably truly awful. Some of those that did make it are a bit embarrassing to be honest, although Hard Work by John Handy had me grooving and syncopating in my chair just now.

The extract linked here as an aside shows the first 40 singles in my collection, numbers 7 to 40 being my Slipped Disc purchases.

The first six deserve a mention, though, not least because the first five will also be Slipped Disc purchases, but those made by my dad some years earlier, when in search of music to use as backing tracks for films. The Wailers record is quite rare, I think. They probably all are. Goodness knows what dad would have paid for those in old money. Probably 1d each. Maybe a ha’penny each.

Record 6 in the collection was the very first record I owned. Simon Smith and the Amazing Dancing Bear by the Alan Price Set. Bless.

I’m really hoping that Paul will chime in with some more memories of these visits. I’m also going to send a link to the Clapham Junction nostalgics who hang out together on Facebook to see if we can generate some additional chat about the amazing record shop that was The Slipped Disc.

London St Johns Hill at Clapham Junction geograph-3072833-by-Ben-Brooksbank

Stop For The Music by The Nutrons, An Aside To The Aside To The Slipped Disc Posting Of 10 August 1977

The above image “borrowed” from Discogs but if you click here you can read more about this record and even try to buy a copy, so I’m sure Discogs won’t mind

This posting is an aside to my listing of the first forty singles in my collection, which itself is an aside to my posting about my visit with Paul Deacon to The Slipped Disc in Clapham Junction in August 1977, which is where/when I bought most of those singles.

Visiting The Slipped Disc in Clapham Junction With Paul Deacon, 10 August 1977

Paul is now (writing in December 2020), amongst other things, a DJ in Ontario, Canada. Paul is the braver sort of DJ; he likes to push his listeners’ boundaries. But I thought he pushed those boundaries beyond the limits on one occasion a few years ago – soon after I published the piece about The Slipped Disc, when he played, as a “request” for me on his show, Stop For The Music by the Nutrons.

Foolishly, I had imagined that Paul would not be able to source such a thing in Canada and even if he could he wouldn’t broadcast it.

Wrong and wrong again.

What does Stop For The Music by The Nutrons sound like?…

…I hear you all cry.

Here is the digitised copy of my single, which has languished in a rather unloved box of singles for more than 40 years.

Dare I say, enjoy!?

The First 40 Singles in My Collection, An Aside To Slipped Disc Posting, 10 August 1977

Set out neatly in a pdf from my iTunes here…First Forty Singles Landscape

…or quoted as a simple listing from my old Access database below.

001,Genie With The Light Brown,Shadows

001,Little Princess,Shadows

002,Shindig,Shadows

002,It’s Been a Blue Day,Shadows

003,Zero-G,Barry Gray

003,Fireball,Barry Gray

004,Playboy,Wailers

004,Your Love,Wailers

005,Funny,Ken Lazrus

005,Walk Like a Dragon,Byron Lee Orchestra

006,Simon Smith And The Amazing,Alan Price Set

006,Tickle Me,Alan Price Set

007,Our Love,Scrounger

007,So Here I Stay,Scrounger

008,Legalise It,Peter Tosh

008,Brand New, Second Hand,Peter Tosh

009,Stop It I Like It,Patti Boulaye

009,Kiss and Make Up Time,Patti Boulaye

010,Hard Work,John Handy

010,Young Enough To Dream,John Handy

011,Red Alert,Patti Boulaye

011,Without My Man Inside,Patti Boulaye

012,Juicy Fruit (Disco Freak) Pt I,Isaac Hayes

012,Juicy Fruit (Disco Freak) Pt I,Isaac Hayes

013,I Want More,Can

013,More,Can

014,All I Wanna Do In Life,Marianne Faithful

014,Wrong Road Again,Marianne Faithful

015,Do My Thing Myself,Glass Menagerie

015,Watching The World Pass By,Glass Menagerie

016,Jolie La Ville Curepipe,Alain Permal Mauritius Police Band

016,Danse Dans Mo Les Bras,Alain Permal Mauritius Police Band

017,Wonderful Dream,Anne-Marie David

017,Tu Te Reconnaitras,Anne-Marie David

018,C’est Ma Fete,Richard Anthony

018,Les Beaux Jours,Richard Anthony

018,Le Ciel Est Si Beau Ce Soir,Richard Anthony

018,Son Meilleur Copain,Richard Anthony

019,Le Roi D’Angleterre,Nino Ferrer

019,Il Me Faudra – Natacha,Nino Ferrer

019,Les Petites Jeunes Filles De Bonne Famille,Nino Ferrer

019,Monsieur Machin,Nino Ferrer

020,Slip And Slide,Medicine Head

020,Cajun Kick,Medicine Head

021,Desperate Dan,Lieutenant Pigeon

021,Opus 300,Lieutenant Pigeon

022,Casatschok,Dimitri Dourakine

022,Toi Toi Toi,Dimitri Dourakine

023,The Trouble,Silvers

023,Almost In Love,Silvers

024,What Do You Say About That,Phase 4

024,I’m Gonna Sit Down And Cry,Phase 4

025,Beautiful Sunday,Daniel Boone

025,Truly Julie,Daniel Boone

026,Ding-A-Dong,Teach-In

026,Let Me In,Teach-In

027,Any Dream Will Do,Max Bygraves

027,Close Every Door To Me,Max Bygraves

028,Back Home,England World Cup Squad 1970

028,Cinnamon Stick,England World Cup Squad 1970

029,I Fall To Pieces,Pat Dusky and the Marines

029,This Can Be The Night,Pat Dusky and the Marines

030,Turn On the Sun,Sandra Christy

030,How Can We Doubt,Sandra Christy

031,Agbogun G’Boro,Tunde Nightingale and his HighLife Boys

031,Kole Si Se,Tunde Nightingale and his HighLife Boys

032,Stop For The Music,Nutrons

032,The Very Best Things,Nutrons

033,Spinning Wheel,King Koss

033,Louisiana,King Koss

034,Blacksmith Blues,Birds of a Feather

034,Sing My Song And Pray,Birds of a Feather

035,It’s All Happening,Leapy Lee

035,It’s Great,Leapy Lee

036,Gonna Give Up Smoking And Take,Pipkins

036,Hole In The Middle,Pipkins

037,Wang Dang Doodle,Dr John

037,Big Chief,Dr John

038,Sacramento,Middle of the Road

038,Love Sweet Love,Middle of the Road

039,Goodnight Sweet Prince,Mister Acker Bilk

039,East Coast Trot,Mister Acker Bilk

040,Lucky Five,Russ Conway

040,The Birthday Cakewalk,Russ Conway

Strictly For The Unsquare, Paul Deacon aka Geoffrey Withers, 14 April 1977

Geoffrey Withers – he is strictly for the unsquare

I’m not entirely sure when Paul Deacon and I came up with the character “Geoffrey Withers”, but it was a long long time ago when we were very small.

For sure it was at my house, because the nonsense started when I played this track to Paul and we started riffing on the idea that an uber-old-fashioned DJ might consider the piece to be “strictly for the unsquare” and use it as his signature tune:

I’m pretty sure that Paul himself “christened” the character “Geoffrey Withers” and gave him his pompous voice. Paul has used this character on his radio shows, sporadically, for at least four decades.

I should get a few bob each time Paul uses the character but heck, life is too short and anyway it’s probably best to save up that potential law suit material for a big one downstream.

With apologies to those who believe in Santa and who believe that there really is a piece of music named “Strictly For The Unsquare”, but this piece is actually named “Pop Sequence” and is from an album named “Cine Mood Music”. How cool is that?

Well, it’s unsquare, anyway.

I’m not sure that Geoffrey was really born on 14 April 1977, but the diary says…

…Paul in afternoon…

…so it might well have been that day. I’ll guess it was around about then, anyhow.

Who’d have thought that such a mucking around session aged 14/15 would have led to a character who still (writing in 2018) pops up from time to time on Paul’s radio shows?

Weird. Warped. Awesome. Unsquare.

Execution Scenes, Coin Tossers And Miscellaneous Silliness Recorded With Paul Deacon, 12 April 1977

On this day in 1977, Paul Deacon and I recorded ourselves larking around, including, for some unknown reason, several takes of a scene emulating an execution at the time of the French Revolution.

I’ve no idea whether anyone other than me and Paul will find this four minute clip funny, but I laughed out loud many times on hearing it again.

I think my favourite bit is on take 4, when you hear my pseudo-Robespierre voice, once again, ask

“do you ‘ave anything to say?”

and you can hear my mother holler from the next room…

“yeh – shut up!”

…at which point Paul collapses in gales of laughter.

Some of the bits in several of the takes where Paul gets tongue-tied around his lines are pretty funny too.

I also laughed out loud at my third announcement of “take 5” – to announce two “take 5s” might be described as unfortunate, to announce three sounds like carelessness.  The juvenilia of a numbers man.

Suffice it to say that the unintended humour works better than the rather mawkish intended humour.

The guillotine sound comes from an actual guillotine…

…no, really…

…a paper one, which looked more or less exactly like this picture, which I have borrowed from an ebay sale long since closed – I’m sure the anonymous photographer/seller won’t mind – fair use for educational purposes blah blah:

Madame la Guillotine

The sound of the drum roll was made on a genuine Southern African bongo drum, a gift from my mother’s dear school friend, “Auntie” Elsie Betts who lived (I believe still lives) in South Africa. For reasons unknown, I took a superb photograph of that majestic drum:

Monsieur Le Bongodrum

The sound of the aristocrat’s head landing was, if I recall correctly, achieved with a white cabbage being dropped into a wastepaper basket. My mother used to make her own coleslaw to my father’s specification – with a light vinaigrette sauce, no mayonnaise nonsense for my dad’s slaw – it was a sort-of cross between sauerkraut and coleslaw really.

But I digress.

Point is, there would always have been a white cabbage conveniently on hand whenever the need arose for a head removal sound effect. The cabbage will have looked like one of these:

White cabbages at Asian supermarket in New Jersey

Paul and I made quite a few silly recordings over the years, but I believe only the one tape survives. Most of our recordings were recorded on the trusty Sony TC377, which looked like this…

…the tape for which was expensive and in demand in the Harris household (mostly by me to be honest), so much of the silly stuff will have been wiped over with other silly stuff or, eventually, something someone wanted to keep.

I meticulously digitised all the reel to reel tapes that survived (a few batches of tape were deteriorating before digitisation, so those tapes couldn’t be saved) but, as far as I can tell, none of the survivors had larking about material on them. Sorry.

So how or why did the 12 April 1977 material survive?

The answer is straightforward and signalled in the following diary page.

The relevant passage is 2 January 1977 – Bank Holiday Monday:

Went to Comet cassette deck. Great.

On that day, our reel-to-reel family bowed to the inevitable and procured a cheap (this is the January sales, isn’t it?) “solid state” cassette deck. It was not a special one. I think it was one of the following or similar –  I have borrowed the picture from an ebay sale long since closed – I’m sure the anonymous photographer/seller won’t mind – fair use for educational purposes blah blah:

While I think Paul and I probably recorded the coin tossers/execution scenes on the reel-to-reel (the clicks sound reel-to-reelish to me – Paul might know better), I at least made a copy or copies onto cassette following that 1977 reording session:

Below I have also embedded the 20 minutes or so of general larking around stuff that preceded the main takes. It’s not a particularly interesting listen; I think we must both have been in an especially silly mood that day. Paul might go through it and extract a few small snippets of value from it. I think there is a Cyril Vaughan impersonation on there somewhere and one or two other impersonations to boot.

The main “conceit” of the following preliminary piece is a spoof sports commentary on the world coin tossing competition. This appears to be a throw-back to an earlier, seminal event, in December 1974:

Breaking The World Record For Coin Catching With Paul Deacon, Woodfield Avenue, 30 December 1974

Anyway, here is twenty minutes of coin tossing, infantile giggling, some impersonations and some early attempts at the execution scenes. This recording is on the other side of the Execution Scenes cassette.

I have written all of this up in September 2018 at Paul Deacon’s request, as he is giving some sort of talk about careers to a women’s group in Canada, the country in which Paul and his family now reside.

Paul wondered if I had any relevant photos of us from that time, which I don’t really – sorry again. The only picture I can lay my hands on with both of us in it is the following, which Paul himself uploaded in our Alleyn’s alum group:

Paul on the right doing the bumping; me the recipient of the bumps. This might take some explaining to a genteel women’s group…

…but if they are instead a group of Canadian Women’s Ice Hockey players/supporters, the picture will look like childishly amateur violence, which it assuredly was.

While I denied all memory of this event when Paul first upped that picture, I have a vague recollection now of how those autumnal-looking bumps came about. I’ll Ogblog about that separately some other time.

This piece is about recordings of execution scenes and stuff. You haven’t yet listened to the four minute execution scenes clip? Here it is again for your convenience. Listen out for my mum as “best supporting actress” in take four.

One Sir – Humanoid Or Similar, But When Was Some Enchanted Evening?, 19 February 1975

Following the 30 December 1974 seminal reference to Paul Deacon in my diary:

Breaking The World Record For Coin Catching With Paul Deacon, Woodfield Avenue, 30 December 1974

…I have a few more references to Paul Deacon in my early 1975 diary, at least one of which for sure was a recording session.

The relevant passage reads:

19 February 1975: went to Paul Deacon’s house. Played all day. “One sir, humanoid or similar”.

I do remember making that recording. The phrase came from Star Trek and for some reason we latched on to it. I even remember the second section of the phrase: “low level of activity”.

We derived a little tune from these phrases and made silly recordings, long since lost. I can even remember the tune, but I feel loathe to attempt a retrospective recording.

Paul might remember it all himself or use various methods of bribery, intoxication or both to get me to give a rendition.

Postscript/Update: Overnight, after sending Paul this piece, not only did Paul submit a comment (below), he also sent me an audio file. Clearly this rendition is an octave or two lower than the pre-teen original, but needless to say, the tune is note perfect. The recording is, it is, in its own way, authentic:

Thank you, Paul. Of course, that 2018 rendition will have been recorded, with ease, using whatever simple recording gadgetary comes as an essential, basic component in Paul’s computer.

Back then, in February 1975, I think Paul was using a cassette deck for his recordings, but perhaps he was already using reel-to-reel – he was certainly well into the latter eventually.

But, by then, we the Harris family had no ordinary reel-to-reel – we had a brand new Sony TC377…

…which looked like the above image and had, amongst its many features, a wonderful feedback/echo chamber facility. With that facility, Paul and I recorded a sort-of psychedelic version of Some Enchanted Evening on one occasion. It might have been the occasion registered in the following diary entry:

Wednesday 9 April 1975. Paul Deacon came for day. Nice time.

The details are lost in the mists of time, but for sure I was enjoying those school holiday muck around with tape recorders days.

Such a shame the tapes seem to have been lost forever.

With thanks to Paul for his comment below, I’m guessing his book look like this image – which you can click through to a well-known on-line store

Eating, Coining It, Too Much TV & Seeing In the New Year: Twixtmas 1974 & The Start Of 1975

Denise Lytton’s excellent chocolate mousse might have looked a bit like this

My handwriting did not improve as I graduated from my 1974 diary to me 1975 one.

Sunday 29 December 1974 – cloudy, sunny intervals. Played at home in morning. Dined at Feld’s & tea at Grandma Anne’s. TV Annual Lectures For Children & Robinson Crusoe v good.

The Royal Institution Archive has the films of all of those lectures available still. I remember loving them as a kid. 1974 was Eric Laithwaite “The Engineer Through The Looking Glass”.

The historic, world record-breaking, events of Monday 30 December, with Paul Deacon, have already been recorded in a special piece on the topic – click here or below:

Breaking The World Record For Coin Catching With Paul Deacon, Woodfield Avenue, 30 December 1974

How I also had the time and energy to watch Call My Bluff & Churchill’s People on TV at the end of that record-breaking day I cannot quite fathom.

Tuesday 31 December 1974 -fair. Went to West End with Andrew [Levinson]. TV Engineer Through Looking Glass, Till Death Us Do Part v good indeed. SAW IN NEW YEAR.

That will have been the first time I was allowed to stay up to see in the new year. These days (50 years later), Janie and I see it as a badge of honour to try and get to bed and get to sleep before the worst of the noise kicks off.

Wednesday 1 January 1975 – cloudy. Uneventful morning. Dined at Schmidt’s. Grandma Anne at home in afternoon and evening. Helped mum win Kalooki.

Thursday 2 January 1975 – cloudy. Cleared out room. Went to barber. TV After That…This and Two Ronnies very good.

Friday 3 January 1975 – cloudy. Went to Brixton – v tiring. TV Crown Court, The Houndcats, Paper Moon, Ken Dodd & MASH v good.

Saturday 4 January 1975 – TV Dr Who, Bruce Forsyth, Match of the Day, v good. Went to Lytton’s. Played with Steven. Denise’s choc. moose was excellent.

I can hardly believe how much TV I watched back then. Match of the Day was not a feature in our house and I suspect I saw that because we were at The Lytton’s place. I think we were still Black and White TV at the start of 1975 – I think the colour TV “arrives” at some point in my 1975 diary, unless it arrived during my diary-writing-sabbatical in mid-1974. Point is, I remember quite a lot of the TV I describe here in black and white. I also remember colour seeming such a luxury.

Aficionados of my juvenile writing as a food critic might note my description of Denise Lytton’s chocolate moose as “excellent”. Praise indeed.

Mum, Me, Denise, Steve & Tony – guzzling peaches in Bulgaria, 1972

My very first diary entry, a year earlier, described Schmidt’s chocolate moose as “nice”.

I Diarist, My First Diary Page, 1 to 5 January 1974

Denise’s “excellent” sure beats Schmidt’s “nice”, and I remember Schmidt’s chocolate moose fondly. Big ups to Denise, albeit 50 years after the event, for that stunning chocolate moose. Never forgotten…or at least, now remembered in writing for posterity.

Breaking The World Record For Coin Catching With Paul Deacon, Woodfield Avenue, 30 December 1974

Deep AI “artist’s impression” of the historic event

In 2004 I was honoured to have formed part of a team, as a NewsRevue writer, that really did win a Guinness World Record – explained and illustrated in the piece linked here and below:

Ultimate Love and Happy Tories, Ivan Shakespeare Memorial Dinner, Café Rouge Holborn, 3 March 2017

But I had clearly forgotten that, 30 years previously, I was involved in another world record feat. The reference in the diary dated 30 December 1974 clearly reads:

Paul Deacon came for day – we broke world coin catching record.

Ok, so perhaps that record was not independently authenticated and certified. Perhaps the world coin catching record is not quite so prestigious as longest running live comedy show.

But a world record IS a world record and we broke it.

We went on to spoof the event in a rather childishly silly (even by our standards) recording we made in April 1977, by which time coin catching had become known as coin tossing, it seems:

Execution Scenes, Coin Tossers And Miscellaneous Silliness Recorded With Paul Deacon, 12 April 1977

I have no recollection of the rules of coin catching and how the world record was established. The 1977 recording might contain some clues, but only to the extent that “rules” and “establishment” probably played a very small part indeed. I’ll guess that the coin was tossed in a conventional “start of a match” stylee and then caught (or not),

More importantly, this diary entry is the first mention of Paul Deacon in my diaries and I actually think that day might well have been the very first time that the two of us got together during the school holidays to lark about.

In which case it was genuinely a milestone or seminal event, even if not genuinely a world record.

Postscript One

Paul Deacon has chimed in with some essential additional details:

Haha. I seem to recall I was good at stacking coins on the back of my elbow then catching them with a flick of the arm downwards. Also spinning a coin one handed. What a sad lad

Postscript Two

A link to this posting kicked off quite a controversy on the Alleyn’s 1970s Alumni Facebook Group. A veritable Coincatchgate.

For those readers who are members of that group, here is a link to that controversy.

After Alleyn’s Advent Term: Comic Capers, Jolly Japes, Marathon Mania, Tempos & Timpos, 15 to 21 December 1974

Although sparse and almost illegible, the notes in my diary from that week bring back a flood of memories.

Here is the page for that week in its glorious technicolour sparseness and illegibility:

I was going through a “coloured tempo pen” phase at that time. I think the Saturday entry was written in invisible ink, which I then remedied with the “antidote” stuff that makes invisible ink visible. That is not conventional diarist method, I now realise, but that idea must have made sense to me at the time…probably because I had bought invisible ink from the joke shop that week.

Let me start deciphering diary entries:

Sunday, 15 December 1974 – Hanukkah party at classes. Dined at Feld’s. [Visited] Jacksons to teach backgammon. TV Planet of the Apes v good

Monday, 16 December 1974 – Played at Andrew’s all day. TV Likely Lads, Waltons and Carry On Christmas very good indeed.

Aficionados of Motown music will be disappointed to learn that I did not visit nor teach backgammon to The Jackson Five.

Just to be clear, I did not teach any of these people backgammon. Not Jackie, not Tito, not Jermaine, not Marlon and not Michael.

The Jacksons, in this instance, were Doreen Benjamin’s parents. Doreen’s mum, Jessie Jackson…yes, I know…was a very close friend of Grandma Jenny and Doreen was a very close friend of mum’s.

For the avoidance of doubt, I neither visited nor taught backgammon to the Reverend Jesse Jackson either

Tuesday, 17 December 1974 – Andrew and I went to “Bossils”? and Hamleys. Classes v good. Mum and dad went to [Angela and John’s] wedding. Fooled all with joke shop hot sweets.

With Hanukkah well before Christmas that year, I suspect that I had already received some seasonal gift money, as had Andy Levinson no doubt, so we were both in a position to treat ourselves on a big day out during the school holidays.

We probably knew where to go (e.g. Hamleys) because of a tradition we were lucky enough to be conjoined in when we were a bit smaller. Mrs Garrett, grandmother of our friend from the street, Bernard Garrett (no, not the Bernard Garrett depicted in the film The Banker), took us up to Hamleys with Bernard a couple of times in the early 1970s as a Christmas treat.

I’m not sure where the joke shop was – I recall visiting Davenports near The British Museum with Andy, but that must have been a different trip I think. I think the source of our joke shop sweets, stinkeroos and invisible ink was a joke shop at the Carnaby end of Soho.

“Fooled all with joke shop sweets” makes me think of the comics we used to read when we were little. I was allowed one a week; my comic of choice was Whizzer and Chips.

I’m sure the conceit that two comics had merged into one made me think I was getting as BOGOF by choosing Whizzer and Chips. Someone else in the street (possibly Andy Levinson) or maybe at Primary School (Alan Cooke?) was more the Beano type, so I would sometimes swap and get to see more than one comic in a week.

I think I had outgrown such comics by the age of 12, but I had clearly not completely outgrown the language I learnt from them. Yaroo!

Wednesday, 18 December 1974 – Dentist in the morning first thing. Essential filling. Andrew in afternoon. “Enhanced”? stinkeroo from the joke shop worked. Went to Fairfield Hall with Paul Deacon – very nice time there.

Mum and dad’s evening at Angela and John’s wedding feast had not been a total success, as I recall. Dad had rather overindulged and mum felt he had embarrassed her. This combination of mum berating and dad hungover was quite clear to me that next morning. Meanwhile I was suffering from my own collywobbles ahead of that trip to the dentist for an “essential filling”.

I have had very few fillings in my lifetime – this might have been my first one or possibly the second.

Our dentist was Harry Wachtel, a gentleman of n Austrian origin, who had been a refugee from the Nazis. He spoke with a thick Germanic accent and did not suffer fools gladly.

I didn’t think that Mr Wachtel had CCTV cameras in his surgery. Yet, a couple of years later, John Schlesinger recreated, in Marathon Man, the scene of that filling, with such exceptional accuracy…I’m now thinking that Harry Wachtel must have filmed that filling event and sent the rushes to John Schlesinger. There is no other possible explanation for the following movie scene:

I cannot remember what Paul Deacon and I went to see at The Fairfield Hall on 18 December 1974. Do you remember, Paul? In any case, many thanks to you, Paul, (or should I say, thanks to your folks) for treating me along with you. My diary suggests that we had a great time.

Thursday, 19 December 1974 – morning Andrews. Lunch at Andrews. Afternoon at home with Andrew -> Classes – TV Mastermind and Xmas Oneupmanship v good.

Friday, 20 December 1974 – Alan [Cooke] here all day – very nice indeed. TV Goodies and the Beanstalk very good. G Anne’s v good got lots of presents.

Saturday, 21 December 1974 – Made a start on model Auntie Pam gave me. TV “something clover v good”?

I’m going to guess that Cookie and I spent a fair part of that day playing the bespoke game we invented with my Hot Wheels car track and a rather motley collection of Timpo Wild West buildings, which we would half-heartedly construct at the end of the Hot Wheels run and then demolish with the Hot Wheels cars.

Maybe you had to be there…or maybe you had to be 10-12 to appreciate this activity, but Alan and I would spend hours at this activity. Hey, Alan – look at those e-bay links – it wouldn’t cost THAT much to recreate the scene. I’m sure Janie would understand and I’m sure we could make space here for yet more clutter.

Sadly, my terrible handwriting, together with the effluxion of time makes the TV element of my log illegible. Happily, BBC Genome comes to the rescue, enabling me to confirm that I rated Doctor In Clover “v good”.