Whoops, 27 Nov 14 - 04:57 PM was me - I was so busy making sure my comments were objective and fair I forgot to sign it! Although I'd spent a good few hours in the VWML beforehand, I only really came across into real folk at Loughborough in the 1970s, taking over Mike Smith's job as Program Controller of the Uni Radio Station so he could help Dave Kettlewell on All The Tunes.

My time on the edge of the theatre was from 69-74, although some chums had been involved earlier - Bob Yetzes (the much bullied Fisher in If, filmed in 1967) and Jeff Sirr (Jai in Tarzan c1966) were mates and we were to some extent educated in the heritage we were going to carry, senior pupils passing the ball down to junior, and it was clear things were expected from us - people like Anne Skelton would do gigs just for fun, so finding myself SMing Queen as a guest band at L'boro a couple of years later was just par for the course (the weekend before the Hammersmith Odeon recording, actually the weekend Rhapsody made #1) - this was the time we were pushing Kraftwerk and Mike Oldfield to Radio 1. ELO, Mud, yep, did them too - not the Stones though. As I've explained elsewhere, Alleyns was the birthplace of the NYT movement - we also count the likes of Leslie Howard, Frank Thornton, David Hemmings, Julian Glover, Simon Ward, Jude Law and Sam West in the number. I say on the edge of the Theatre with a degree of tongue in cheek - where the demarkation in work and thinking on a School Production and ideas going forwards to the NYT and beyond lay is anybody's guess. Jude Law is typical: his first NYT stage credits are from age 14, the same age I was when finding those OWALW uniforms. Oh the innocence of youth...

One other angle I'm trying to think back to - and it is fifty years - is that as far as I can recall, the Coppers were about the last of a wider movement in Rottingdean. I know that one name from my not then too distant past was a maypole expert from the area, Freddie Hambleton, who had also broadcast summat. For the real geeks, he's worked in the LBSCR Eastleigh works and did the paintwork on the renovated Terrier loco Bluebell from memory.

Guest 28 Nov 14 - 01:19 PM is not me.