It was a decade short on comforts and high on changing attitudes: you could buy a wireless set for about 3 guineas, a television receiver for £30, and a house complete with damp walls for £300.
New names and new phenomena filtered into the language and the mind. We had a youthful Queen, workers had their playtime: housewives had their choice; families had their favourites. It was a decade of Formica and flying saucers; the BBC Home Service the Light Programme and Luxembourg: National Savings: holiday camps, hangings and ERNIE.
We had the Daily Sketch and Herald: youth clubs and Saturday flicks; Rockola, skiffle, sputnik and smog. It was a world of coal fires, tin baths, outside petty’s and the regular reassurance that somehow “Normal Service would be resumed as soon as possible”. We went to work on liveried corporation buses, rode a bicycle or caught a steam train. Men wore flat caps or trilbies, ladies wore headscarves and mothers always wore a pinny.
Names etched into the memory are; Brigitte Bardot, Marilyn Monroe, Jayne Mansfield and the lovely Sabrina. Billy Bunter, Sooty, Bloodknock, Bluebottle, Seagoon, Eccles and Sgt Bilko. There was Joseph Locke, Bob, Bing and Elvis. The speed changed from 78 to 45 as the roots of Rock & Roll were planted. The old-fashioned ways and music died but then somehow it all lived on, and as the decade closed, trousers were tighter music was louder, optimism was higher.
Who remembers? Norman Hackforth, Arthur English “open the cage” Norman Wisdom, the Clitheroe Kid, and Leslie Welch remembering everv-thing? Rocky Marciano, Sandy McPherson, Philip Harben, Carroll Lewis, the medolic Semprini, Yana, Tonto and Sparky’s Magic Piano. The great northern tones of Norman Evans. Rob Wilton, Ken Platt, Ted Lune, Al Read and Jimmy James and poor Eli. Wilfred Pickles was ‘Having A Go’. Then there were the ladies such as Marlene from the Midlands; Kitty Bluett; Tessie O’Shea; Alma Cogan; Doris Day, Winifred Atwell and Mrs Mills and their upright pianos.
There was Amos and Andy; Bill and Ben; Bebe and Ben; Burns and Allen; Jewell and Warris; Rawicz and Lauder; Martin and Lewis, Brough and Archie Andrews. Then there were Bob and Alf Pearson: Albert and Les Ward, Hans and Lotte Hass; Mick and Montmorency. Edmundo Ross - a rain soaked Gene Kelly; two sorts of whistling from Ronnie Ronalde and Percy Edwards; The Appleyards and the Grove family.
Oh, how we laughed at the sheer lunacy of Max Wall, Sid Millward and the Nitwits and the great Fred Emney. Spike Jones and his City slickers, the babbling brook of Donald Peers; Wee Georgie Wood, Wee Willie Harris, and the five Smith Brothers. Let’s not forget the ‘voice of them all’ Mr Peter Kavanagh. Our radios overflowed with signature tunes and catch phrases. At 7:30 every Saturday night the mighty roar of London’s traffic stopped for In Town Tonight.
Lugholes were pinned back regularly for the endless assortment of odd odes, courtesy of Cyril Fletcher, and yes that was Henry Hall speaking and tonight was his guest night! “Wakev Wakey”; “Right monkey”; “Can you hear me Mother”; “Its agony Ivy”, “Ring that bell, bang that drum” and Wheelers and Shunters “Aye, aye that’s your lot”. As the TV advertisements began to catch our hungry imagination, children and adults alike were beginning to wonder where the yellow went! Some mints were too good to hurry; clothes washed in a certain type of powder showed ‘not a stain and shining bright’ and was there anybody who could not tell Stork from butter? And everybody knew somebody with a voice like the Esso Blee Dooler!
A kaleidoscope of memories from a time when the only spin came from a world that went slower. Those who lived through the bittersweet decade of the fifties will remember it began with austere wartime rationing, and ended in a blaze of optimism - it was an innocent age, a golden era, truly a good time to have been there.
Fred Fielder
