LOSE YOURSELF IN 1964

RADIO CAROLINE GOES ON THE AIR

Britain’s first pirate radio station debuted with the voice of Cyril Nicholas Henty-Dodd – stagename Simon Dee – saying: ‘Hello everybody. This is Radio Caroline, broadcasting on 199, your all-day music station.’ The first disc to air was Not Fade Away by the Rolling Stones, and as The Observer put it, the station planned ‘to broadcast modern light music records every day from 6am to 6pm’. Far out.

THE FIRST NIGHT OF BBC2

It was a Tuesday evening that promised a gala opening for BBC2, with programmes scheduled to start at 7.20pm. However, a fire at Battersea Power Station caused a vast power cut throughout much of west London, disrupting both BBC channels. Broadcasting on BBC2 resumed at 11am the following morning with the first edition of Play School, presented by Virginia Stride and Gordon Rollings. Rather wonderfully, a tape still exists.

CROSSROADS OPENS FOR BUSINESS

At 6.30pm, ATV broadcast the first episode of the famous motel saga, but Crossroads would not be fully networked until 1972. This deprived viewers in several regions of the high drama (and flexible sets…) of life in the village of King’s Oak. The earliest surviving edition of Crossroads dates from 1965, and it anticipates Acorn Antiques by two decades. Ken Dodd, Bob Monkhouse and others made guest appearances.

DONALD CAMPBELL SETS THE WORLD SPEED RECORD ON WATER

On the last day of 1964, Donald Malcolm Campbell became the first man to set both the land and water speed records in the same year. Bluebird reached 276.33mph on Dumbleyung Lake in Australia, breaking Campbell’s own 1959 record of 260.35mph on Coniston Water in the Lake District.