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I remember seeing that...about as bizarre as The Prisoner and The Avengers...I also saw him live at the Empire in...'The roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd'...My first and only visit to a musical...never understood why they were so popular down the Smoke with tourists.

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Apologies for taking this thread a bit off course but it made me think of something I remember doing as a kid........

If there are any Notts coppers here, I wonder if I ever heard their voices back in the 60s/70s on police radio.

I'll bet I'm not the only one who used to do this, but back in those days police radio used to operate on VHF, so you could hear it on a normal domestic radio set. So if I was bored, or if it was late evening/night and I had nothing else to do, I'd turn the radio on and wander along the VHF wavelength listening to the police control room sending crews out to various incidents. The highlight was if there was something like a chase, when you'd get a running commentary of who was going where, and a minute by minute update of locations and progress (although it didn't mean much to me if it was all happening in an area I didn't know).

Listening in that way I learned about a lot of things that happened in Nottingham which never got a mention in the Evening Post or on the radio.

By the early 1980s (or even earlier) they moved to UHF frequencies so it was no longer possible to listen at home, and anyway I'd grown up a bit by then.

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I was listening to the police radio late one night when I heard a chase, after a while they mentioned the driver was one Dave Needham, and that caution was required as he was the ex-boxer. they caught him near Mecca Village. He failed the breathalizer and was arrested.

Next time I saw Dave he told me two brave cops held his arms while two others took turns punching him in the stomach. He also said they couldn't punch for toffee. For those of you who never saw Dave, he was about 5'9", if that.

Because he had been done for drunk driving before, he got time, and this contributed to his decine. RIP Dave.

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You didn't need to be famous to receive a beating from the police in the 60s. I received mine in Wickford police station for sitting on a public bench at 0630hrs on a Saturday morning. I had hitch hiked from Buckinghamshire across London and got a lift in a taxi going off duty. He took me almost to where I was going, getting me there very early and at that time in the morning one didn't go knocking folk up. My intention had been to wait until a reasonable hour before disturbing my girlfriend's family. I was carefully beaten up for "Suspected Vagrancy". They didn't want "My sort" in their town.

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  • 2 weeks later...

And even further off topic was the Fruit & Veg.seller with a horse and cart in Colwick many years ago who used to shout..."Won't be round tomorrow..Donkey's pi**ed on the strawberries!"

Never thought I'd hear that again! When I was younger, my old dad used to take the mick out of anyone who was "bawling out their wares" with a similar version of that....."Apples tuppence a pahnd, pears the same, the donkey's pi**ed on the strawberries"... me mam used to go mad at him!

So was it an urban legend, poohbear, or did that actually go on? If the prices were appropriate to the time I'd guess it was before the last war.

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I know you asked poohbear Scriv, but if a legend then a far reaching one as my ref re Anthony Newley referred to a version of the old song Strawberry Fair that he did late 1950,s/early 60's?, which at the end included the line "Shan't be round tomarra" etc but with a "decent" excuse! lol, maybe "donkey's eaten all the strawberries" Can't stand the original song or his jazzed up version, but that barraboy cry was memorable

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That pitch has been used..and a lot worse, I've done it myself on slow days.You have a dodgy one and a clean version..depends who's passing.

The public rarely listen anyway...you see the little old lady saying to her friend.."What did he say?"...then you pitch again but with the cleaned up version..They just walk past tapping their hearing aid... ;)

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my ref re Anthony Newley referred to a version of the old song Strawberry Fair that he did late 1950,s/early 60's?, which at the end included the line "Shan't be round tomarra"

Yer right Ashley

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  • 5 weeks later...

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