Daddy Cool and the Chicago 7 (8)

 Music has been fundamental to my life since I was a child in Calcutta. Moving to Britain in the 1950's provided me with the opportunity to grow up in London in the 1960's. An extraordinary time to be alive.

Now, late in my life I have been blessed with another opportunity to use my love of music and the fact that I was surrounded by so much socio-cultural change and to share these experiences with others; I use my alter ego daddy cool on a radio show on 97.5 FM where I put on a show called the Beatles and Beyond.
It’s central theme is of course music by the Beatles and the rest of the performers that came along in that decade. It just so happens, that’s so much of the iconic events are coming up with their 50th anniversary‘s now. It gives me a jumping off point to select music to play.

I do try and emphasize particular occurrences that had consequences outside of the entertainment business. But as it is essentially a music show so I do not raise too many of those events.  It does weigh heavily on me that so many people and so much of TV and movies of that era, emphasize the youthfulness and joyfulness only,  however, if you were there, you would know about the dark underbelly of those times.

By that, I refer to the Vietnam war and the protests and the civil rights movement that doesn’t get any deep serious analysis on the regular networks.
I strongly encourage  everyone to watch the Netflix original show The Trial of the Chicago seven. It is an amazing representation of just one event; a slice of time that seems to have been a part of a Monty Python show. It is about the trial, originally of  young men Who went to the Democratic national convention in Chicago in August 1968. They wanted to voice their concern over the handling of the war and the Draft. What happened  was a riot that they were blamed for, and as you see in the show the root cause of the riot was the actions of  the Chicago police force and Chicago City Hall.

One of the Chicago eight was Bobby Seale A member of the black panther group. The way he was treated by the judicial system is an outrage. In an effort to keep the court room activity moving, they removed him from that setting.

The Sixties we’re NOT just about peace and love and music.  There was a huge Movement to change the established guard , or in the phraseology of the Times "stick it to the man!"

This program really shows you why Youth at that time  were, in numbers increasing because of the Baby Boom, but were in fact marginalized by the political institutions of the era.

Do Watch it.

March 13, 1970

 It was about 7 PM on Friday, March 13, 1970. 

My father and I had left Kingsbury Tube Station,  got in the car to drive home and turned on the radio to listen to the BBC. In that time slot they played tracks from the new albums released that week. 

It was the last day that I would be commuting in London, that is why it is emblazoned in my memory. One album they played was Willie and the poor boys, from Credence Clearwater Revival. Here, from that album, is a track that was released as a single and became a hit. It is forever in my memories of those transitional days. CCR and Down on the Corner. 

The number one tune that week in the US and UK was Bridge Over Troubled Water from Simon and Garfunkel.

And also in the top 10 Billboard chart  that week was The Hollies with He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother and the Beatles'  Let it Be.

All songs that are still played on the radio in 2020.

And all very much linked to that drive home from the Tube Station with my dad.

October Crisis

 I was still in my first year as an immigrant in Canada. I had travelled a fair bit around southern Ontario but did not feel that I was a Canadian yet. However, I did think I still belonged to the community of western democracies.

Canada, just like America, the UK and Europe were embroiled in a struggle between the present generation and the old guard over the need for the Vietnam war.

As I had mentioned earlier, the struggles that Canadians were different from the other countries  had not really sunk into my consciousness. It was a great surprise to find Canada suddenly struggling over of a sense of identity and free speech and radical groups when the October crisis occurred.

I was living in Toronto but had friends in Montreal and I travel there quite a few weekends in my first months to stay with them. It was October 1970, I was visiting the family friends who lived in the western part of Montreal Island and I took the train into the city.
It came as a great shock to see tanks travelling down Ste. Catherines.  I went into Le Château to browse clothes and when I came out,  standing right by the exit, was a soldier in full uniform and weapons standing guard looking out. I had to walk past him, no more than 6 or 10 inches apart.  He just stared ahead. I assumed his eyes were sweeping up and down the street looking for trouble makers.

It was surreal.

Not something I had expected to experience in my new country.

Drag Racing

As baby boomers grew up in the 1950's, they were fascinated by the experiences of their older siblings.  The ones who were too young to go to war, yet, because of the war,  had a very unusual childhood & adolescence.

The post war period saw these new "Young Adults" adopting new lifestyles -  the original Hippies and modern music; either Jazz or Folk. Basically rebelling against the previous generation.

So, while we were still teenagers,  the life style that became known as the west coast lifestyle was something we aspired to; even we in Britain. Maybe I am stretching it too far to say Britain, it was probably more a case of being centred in London.

It began with Surfing and Surfin' music then the marketers needed to move up an age cohort and looked to Drag racing and muscle cars. Both of these interests were reflected in our musical fancies:

Surfin' Safari; Wipe-out; lots more surf based themes,  then, Little Deuce Coupe; Shut Down; Hey. Little Cobra. (Mind you, there was nothing little about the Cobra. It was a beast of a motor. If you had kept your 1965 AC Cobra, you could probably get $2 Million for it now!)

Strangely enough, the record companies thought there was a market for albums of Drag Racing Sounds. The first one, "The Sounds of the Big Drags" actually sold over 100,000 copies! It led to follow ups specializing on the different Drag Racing categories, such as Nitro burning dragsters.

Above  are some of the albums we were intrigued by in that era.

Pre-fab homes

 I have a memory of our early days in Kingsbury of walking through a small group of pre-fab houses on Kingsbury road at the edge of Roe Green. (That was the open green space that had existed since Norman times.) My grandmother and I walked home from Kingsbury Tube station to 16 Princes that went passed these homes.

Mostly, we went to Burnt Oak station and Watling Avenue when we went into town, and returned home from the opposite direction.  So this is a rare memory. I was about 12, (1956). 

By the time I traveled around Kingsbury regularly with my friends, it was 1959 and those homes had gone.
I do not recall ever discussing them in the intervening years.

However, Recent TV shows on housing in Britain over the centuries had an item on these structures. Suddenly, my memory of them returned. I had to find out more about them and what they were doing there.
They were a result of the extreme shortage in housing after the Second World War and were short term relief. Only meant to last 10 years or so. They were factory built and supposedly could be put up quicker than the usual brick built homes found in the UK.  They also required the Local Council to have available open space to place them in. Hence Wembley Borough offered Roe Green. (Wembley is now a part of the bigger Borough of Brent.)

Interesting enough, I found that Rolling Stones drummer, Charlie Watts lived in one of the homes and their replacement council houses. That was how he ended up in the same school as me for a year, (I transferred out,) and in his newer home he was also a neighbour to my school friends.

vaccine for the traveler

In 1966, I was planning a trip to the United States during the summer break from college. As it happened, the UK and parts of Europe suddenly had a spike in smallpox cases.

America demanded that all visitors to the country must have been vaccinated against smallpox and had to show proof of such vaccination.

I went to my GP and requested a smallpox vaccination and asked what was the proof of vaccination. He gave me the vaccination and a small book that was acceptable to  the authorities. I am assuming to both the US and WHO standards. In it he wrote the name of the vaccine, and the date and his signature.

Then, I had to take the little book to Wembley Town Hall where the county medical health office was located. There, a charming bureaucratic lady took out a book of all the doctors in the county, with an example of their signature. She compared my GP's signature in the little book, agreed it was the same thing, and took out a little bureaucratic rubber stamp and proceeded to place the requisite stamp into my little book. It verified that everything was above board. I truly was vaccinated against smallpox. I had to show that little document when I arrived at passport control at JFK that summer.

Whenever they finally sort out COVID-19, I envisage a similar kind of document for travelers proving that:
a) they have tested negative for COVID-19 within the last 14 days, or, 
b) if a vaccine is available, we will have to be vaccinated and the signatures authenticated.
This process is in place, has been used for decades, but if a    Covid-19 vaccine becomes available, I am sure there will be people claiming infringement of all manner of liberties!!

I had a talk with my man

It is amazing how some friendships start and what it is that holds them together for nearly 6 decades.

It was my first month of attending Regent St., Polytechnic in 1964. The daily lecture schedule always began with an economics lecture in the main auditorium and then after 90 minutes or so we had a break.
Almost everybody would go to the cafeteria and have a cuppa tea. As one would expect from impoverished students, we had nothing more than a "round of toast." Do you know what a round of toast is? A peculiar English phrase meaning two slices of bread toasted, lightly buttered and then cut into a triangle; at least that is my memory of it.
The cafeteria had long tables with seats all around. We usually just plonked down without regard to who we were sitting next to. As it was our first month, friendships had not really been cemented yet. However, there I was sitting at a table, when a guy at the adjoining table leaned, over tapped me on the shoulder, and said:
“ heard a song on radio Luxemburg last night, a really great song by a female singer about her boyfriend. Do you know what it is?”
No, hello, my name is... or, who are you, whatever. Simply a question about music.
His name was Paul, as I found out later. I had never spoken to him before and I have never known why he picked on me. But he made a good choice because I was mad on music, particularly, as it turns out, the same kind of R&B and female group singers that he liked. I answered:
“ I bet it was I had a talk with my Man by Mitty Collier on Chess.”
“ yes yes, that’s the one. Do you want to go buy it at lunchtime?”
“OK, I replied.”
And so began the friendship that has lasted 56 years and counting.
There was no introduction it was straight into a question with a Stranger that happened to hit the mark. The quirkiness of that introduction was replicated in our relationship over the following decades. No one understood Paul the way I did, not even his beautiful wife, that I am pleased to say remains one of my friends to this day.
That simple music question led to a friendship that resulted in the three of us emigrating to Canada in 1970.

Libraries

Most people know that I lived in Kingsbury, NW London during my school years and early adulthood.
However the suburban area our house was located within a little area everybody just called the "Village". I never thought much of it at the time but I have come to learn that it was a reference to Roe Green Village, and its adjoining open space just called Roe Green. It is in fact, a 1000 year old village and it is referenced  in the Domesday book of 1086. There was nothing that old in the village; However, there was  a quaint setting of small cottages with beautiful thatched roofs.  In the same location as those cottages was a small library, an offshoot of the main library in Wembley town hall. This little library on Stag Lane in the village served me well all my growing up years.

I had a library card almost as soon as we arrived and when my Nana joined us she too was an avid reader. I remember many occasions that she and I would walk from 16 Princess Avenue to that little library on Stag Lane to take out the three books that you were allowed at one time.

Whoever ran the library was culturally aware and a very astute person. The little reading room for newspapers not only had the obvious The Times, Daily Mail, The Daily Express, The Manchester Guardian (as it was known back then, now, simply The Guardian.) Our local paper naturally,  but also many magazines. I went regularly every week to read the latest copy of Autocar, Motor, National Geographic, Scientific American and as I look back on it now I realize they did not stock any of the tabloid magazines. Something that would be unheard of in the modern world.
What was especially interesting as you walked in  there was the check out and return desk facing you, but  right in front of that, was a table displaying the new additions. The librarian must have particularly liked to read the Sunday Times and The Observer for their book reviews; because what had just been reviewed was prominently  displayed. As those were two of the six newspapers we got every Sunday at No.16,  I and my friends looked over the new books for the ones that might interest us. It was great to be able to walk around the corner and borrow them as soon as they were published. It may not seem like much in today's world of clicking on your computer or iPad and having access to millions of books and journals, but it was pretty rare back in the fifties and sixties to live in a little suburban enclave and have such ready access to current books. It was especially significant as the library often had the books before they made the bestseller list or became controversial and then everybody wanted to borrow them!

As I said it was a small library, it did not have tens of thousands of books but a very eclectic collection. It focused on fiction and then in one corner, it had a non-fiction stack of shelves full of science books.
Starting from the time I was about 12 until I emigrated to Canada in 1970,  I can proudly claim that I read every science book in the library; regardless of which science discipline it was featuring. So began a lifelong love of science.

I am a staunch supporter of libraries and how empowering they are for all people in the community.

Support Your Library !

Albums that influenced me

I, like many others on Facebook, were given a task to choose ten albums that greatly influenced my taste in music. One album per day for ten consecutive days. It was supposed to be just album covers.  However, I could not resist a few comments.

*  Billy Joel’s brilliant The Stranger. 26 million and counting copies have been sold worldwide.
The vivid story telling of Movin’ Out (Anthony’s Song) is brilliant. One never tires of the description of Italian American Brooklyn. Only one of the great songs that are featured.

“Anthony works in the grocery store
"Savin' his pennies for someday”

*  One of the great English artists riding the wave of the British Invasion of the Sixties was Joe Cocker. He made his mark by redefining the Beatles ‘With a Little Help from my Friends'. However, this album, simply called Joe Cocker pointed the way for the rest of his career. A major interpreter of other writers’ songs. Listen to Delta Lady on this LP (Leon Russel’s song) and John Sebastian’s Masterpiece, Darling, Be Home Soon. A love song I wish I had written.

*  My introduction to Fusion Rock was this next album, The Mahavishnu Orchestra with The Inner Mounting Flame.
Amazing sound. I saw them in Toronto, the opening act was Weather Report. What a line up.
Listen to this with headphones... it will fill your brain.

*  The amazing Rolling Stones Let it Bleed. Christmas 1969 I played this constantly as I prepared to emigrate. You can’t always get what you want. At that juncture, I had little clue as to what I really wanted. A change; seemed simple enough, do not know why I had to move continents!
Never regretted that decision, nor have I tired of this album.

*  The amazing Joni Mitchell and Blue. Also on many other friends’ top 10 list.
What can I say.. Universal emotions yet something very Canadian for me to relate to.

*  Here is THE ultimate Otis Redding album, Otis Blue.  Recorded in less than 48 hours straight, between shows. Backed by the amazing Booker T & the MG's plus Memphis horns. What soul and RnB was all about in the Sixties. I have never stopped playing it.

*  THE album that turned everyone on to psychedelic rock was Surrealistic Pillow. At first I did not “get” it. Now, it remains on my everyday playlist. Jefferson Airplane’s 2nd LP but first with Grace Slick. The instrumental Embryonic Journey from this LP was used in the closing scene of the last 'Friends' episode..

*  Here is THE album that lead me to be a life-long devotee of this group & each member within.
At school, we all wondered how an instrumental could ooze so much soulfulness... no words, just an aching bluesy organ line then a wicked guitar break. Green Onions by Booker T & the MG's.

*  Now THE album that lead me to begin a 60 year admiration for Bob Dylan, Freewheelin'.  It captivated me back in 1963, won over my friends- - and a whole generation.

*  Here is one of the first vinyls I acquired. A birthday present for a 12 year old boy. Benny Goodman and his Orchestra, Trio and Quartet Live Radio Performances.  I loved big band music.
(I still have this LP down in the locker room in the Condo.)

RNOH

One of the reasons we moved to England was so that I could get treatment for scoliosis that had resulted from my contracting polio when I was 13 months old.
Ever diligent, my mother tracked down and got an appointment to see one of the leading children’s orthopaedic surgeons. His name was Mr. Jones. It is an oddity of the British homage to Class distinctions that "doctors" who belong to the "Royal College of Surgeons" are not referred to as Dr. James by their colleagues. He is known as Mr. James RSC.
He turned out to be a brilliant surgeon, a man I cannot thank enough for giving me the ability to live an independent life as an adult.
However, back then in 1954 when I was 10, I had an operation known as a spinal fusion that required me to be in hospital for 10 months. The hospital was a world leader in spinal work for children, The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, (RNOH). It still exists.

Back then, in the immediate postwar years, the Brits had a strange view of children in hospitals. It was that visitors disrupted the business of the hospital and somehow delayed the children’s ability to heal.

It would be a reasonable assumption that the child in hospital particularly in the middle of the 20th century was likely to have siblings. However those siblings, if they were younger than 18 were not allowed to visit. Do not ask me what the rationale could have been but I did know that I was unhappy with not having my sister visit me; she was 14 at the time.
When I complained to my mother that it wasn’t fair,  my mother suggested that I,  personally, write to the head of the hospital's Chief of Patient Social Welfare, a position that had the odd title of Almoner. So I did. In my 10-year old scrawl. I told her that I could not imagine spending nine months without seeing my sister; much to everyone’s surprise the Almoner listened to me and gave my sister Suzy a letter permitting her to come and visit me regularly even though she was not 18. The only "child" visitor in the huge hospital wards.

When I say visit regularly, let me explain further: visiting hours in those days were a half an hour on Wednesday evenings from 7:30 to 8:00 pm and one hour on the weekends on  Saturday and Sunday  afternoons from 2:00 to 3:00 pm. 

In the  hour while the family were visiting, one of the "Volunteers" would go around the ward with a trolly selling cups of tea, sandwiches and little cupcakes. Of which we all indulged.
However, this is also the period of one of the great Lavalette family traditions. When we arrived in England the one thing my father requested from our days in India was that every Sunday mom would cook a curry and rice lunch. We were not going to have the traditional English Sunday Lunch of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. 
Oh, how I missed those curries in those months while I was in hospital. It was not long before each Sunday visit,  mom and dad brought me a curry sandwich. How I looked forward to that precious treat. Forget about full body plaster casts, 10 months prone in bed, sweet nurses, what remains with me most of all, is looking forward to the Sundays with curry sandwiches! And having my sister with me when no-one else did. What a smart mother we had.

Mother's Day telephone calls

How things have changed in the last few decades.

We have so many vehicles for communicating with each other:  Facebook , Instagram and still that old standby  - the Hallmark card. 

Except for the card,  or any other written communication,  we expect the message to be sent instantly. There is no delay between typing the message into the keyboard and hitting post, or send.

Things were very different when I first came to Canada 50 years ago. The main vehicle for communicating on Mother’s Day was the telephone. What a nightmare that was. 
On Mother’s Day, which the telephone company regularly told us was the busiest day of the year, you nearly always got a busy signal the minute you picked up the phone. I am serious.   The busy tone came on instantly you picked up the hand-piece off the cradle. The lines were so tied up.  I would be on the phone for hours before I could get through.
By the early Eighties, I had an arrangement with my mother whereby I would always phone her on the Saturday and wish her happy Mother’s Day. At least I knew we would get through to each other and could talk as long as we wished.

How long ago that all seems and how I wished I could do that now.

Goodge Street Underground Station

In the middle of the lock-down in London, I see that the tube lines were closing some of the stations as they would lead to the travelers being too close together inside the station concourse. One of the stations that was closed I noticed was Goodge Street station.

In mid to late 1964, when I began attending the Regent Street Polytechnic, my family and I would get on the Northern Line tube at Burnt Oak Station and go "into Town." The tube stop that I would get off at, was Goodge Street.

In those days I would walk the back routes, passed old Victorian office buildings, factories and pubs and a landscape that had barely changed from the 19th century! I walked passed Cleveland Street, crossover Great Titchfield Street to get to little Titchfield Street. That was where my College was located.
I used to walk past La Scala, the theatre that the Beatles featured in A Hard Days Night movie, with all the screaming girls lined up outside. Beatlemania in its most crazy times. Now it was empty and forgotten as I walked by it in the mornings reflecting on the crazy scenes of the movie.

The most significant thing about Goodge Street tube station and most likely the reason why they closed it during Covid-19 pandemic, is the fact that you can’t get to the platform via stairs or escalators. You have to use two large lift, as the Brits call them; elevators in North America. There is a picture below showing what they look like. When I was exiting the tube heading for the outside world we would be packed into this structure.

Luckily it never jammed or failed me in the years that I utilized it.
As I familiarized myself with all the streets around my college and London's crazy Sixties locations, I began taking different tube stations in my daily journey and experiencing a wonderful time to be young in a city that was at the centre of a rapidly changing society.

My old school buildings have all been torn down and the College is now The University of Westminster. Most of the old Victorian buildings have been demolished and the area is full of modern gleaming skyscrapers, but I have not forgotten that lift at Goodge Street and its puke green paint!

Can You Waddle?

On my radio show, I often talk about the rock ‘n’ roll era and record companies desire  to make up dance crazes and then release dance songs to go with them. 

Just about everyone knows about the twist and how successful that dance  craze became around the world. Here is another peculiar dance craze, with the song promoting it, that I loved. I had the 45 RPM disc back in London.  I read about it in the New Musical Express, the music paper my friends and I read every Friday. I saw a review about the song, and that Saturday morning I went to the local record shop and asked to listen to the tune and loved it. I don’t know anybody else who liked it, my friends just put up with my peculiar tastes and humored me, as I played it often when they came over for a visit.  

It took me decades to find another copy after I had immigrated to Canada. Here it is now, can you waddle done by the Spartans. 

SONG

Can You Waddle -  the Spartans

 https://youtu.be/uE_t0Su-qhE

Here is write-up in Billboard in early 1962 about this record.

March 1970

I emigrated to Canada in 1970, arriving at Toronto "Malton" Airport, as it was known then, on March 15th; around 2 pm.

I spent 3 fruitless months job hunting before a position, sort of, dropped into my lap. A great job for 4 1/2 years before my next step in adulthood.
Those years were filled with hours of commuting on the 401 with a Mini-load of friends. All singing along to the hits on the radio.
However, there was one particular track, and album, forever associated with March 1970.

The album of my immigration days. No. 1 when I left the UK, No. 1 when I arrived in Canada. Everywhere I went, people were playing it.

Yoko Ono

February 18, 2020 was Yoko Ono's 87th Birthday. Quite amazing, given that she is still putting out Dance Music that is popular in the clubs. I understand that it is really  a DJ Re-mixing her older material, however,  her unusual style of singing is accepted now; although when John Lennon was her biggest supporter from mid-1968 onwards, very few Beatles fans appreciated his commentary about her "Art".
Leap Years
On February 29, 1968, the Royal Albert Hall in London realized that there was an  extra day in February and they had not scheduled any  performances. (Hard to believe that no-one had a calendar in the office!) Ornette Coleman, the American multi-instrumentalist jazz artist, was in town and on short notice agreed to perform on that evening. 

A friend of mine from our school days, was a big Ornette fan and asked if I would like to go to the show; and,  I agreed. The biggest surprise was that Ornette had a special guest along with his Quartet - - it was Yoko Ono. My friend and I went to unusual modern music performers from time to time but nothing prepared us for Yoko!
Her style of Japanese "singing" was pretty much just a loud screeching wail.
It was quite an endurance to sit through her performance.

Oh, well, at least I could say that I knew about Yoko just before she and John became one of the most famous couples in the world. (February  1968, John was still in India.)

  

Andy Warhol

It was summer 1966, July 14 to be precise, I was in a big 707 flying to New York City. I was so excited. The whole aircraft was full of British students that belonged to a club which chartered planes for cheap travel to North America.

I was sitting in the aisle seat reading a book when two other passengers started talking about art. The guy in the window seat was pompous and opinionated and pretty much running down any artists after Michelangelo. The guy in the middle seat, looked a little older than us 20-somethings and was  more reserved and measured  in his comments. I looked up from my book and said that I liked a lot of modern art, even if I didn't understand it on a technical basis. And then I shut up and the two of them went on.

A little later, the guy in the middle seat who name was Marc, quietly asked me what sort of modern Art did I  like? I said that  Jackson Pollock and Andy Warhol were among my favourites. Quietly, Marc said to me, " Would you like to meet Andy?"
Would I?!
Do you know him I asked? Marc told me that he had just completed his Masters in Fine Arts at the University of York, and  had been spending summers in New York City for a couple of years, and he had met Andy many times. He was pretty sure that he was going to see him again; he  just didn’t know when exactly. As I was going to be in New York for a week or so,  he gave me his phone number, where  he would be staying in Manhattan, and told me to call him.
I did call Marc, and he told me which day and what time he would be going to Andy Warhol's studio and I should join him there. I was beyond excited!

The studio was the famous 'Factory' where Andy did much of his  creative work. The 'Factory' was located on the Fifth Floor of a building at  231 East 47th Street in Manhattan.  It was a  wonderfully bright sunny Saturday afternoon and the place was buzzing with people, clearly quite a few of them were hanger-ons,  just like me.

That was how I got to spend an afternoon with Andy Warhol while he was editing, with a lot of enthusiasm, a  film that he was working on.

The man I met on the plane was Marc Lancaster, that I have since discovered became a famous art critic in New York.
It was an amazing summer to be in America.

The Day the Music Died

I know that I belong to the 99% group of the population.

But in old age, looking back on my life, I realize I had a pretty unique and privileged life, all be it, a very definitely middle class one. Just not the typical middle-class expected from someone growing up and being educated in a London suburb.

One of the unusual aspects of my childhood was that when I was about 12 my parents got a daily newspaper delivered to the house just for me; by that, I mean a newspaper of my choice. In the 21st-century in North America it is difficult to appreciate how literate the British population is. All classes, working class  to landed gentry, read daily papers and were well served  by a huge choice.

My parents choice of newspaper was the Daily Express and the Daily Mail, I chose the Daily Mirror, for the very 12-year-old reason that I liked their comic pages. (It was usually considered as a paper for the working classes. It supported the Labour Party in its political outlook.) Although, to its credit, the Daily Mirror had a terrific political correspondent who wrote under the pen name Cassandra. ( Look it up! ) I came to appreciate his analysis more when I was older.

My dad would wake me up with a cuppa tea and a paper. Now if that isn’t the epitome of privilege I don’t know what is.

One of my most striking memories a good 61 years ago was of  February 4 1959, when I woke up to the daily mirrors headline reporting on the death of Buddy holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper.

The day the music died. As Don Maclean sang in American Pie.