LOSE YOURSELF IN 1966

BEACH CAROLINE

In the days before independent radio or the BBC embracing teenagers and launching Radio 1, the yoof got much of their pop music output from pirate radio stations broadcast from ships in international waters. Radio Caroline was one of the most popular and best-known. On 20 January, after broadcasting for the day had ended – the final song being Barry McGuire’s Eve of Destruction – a gale developed, and Radio Caroline South’s MV Mi Amigo broke her anchor and started drifting. Nobody noticed until DJ Dave Lee Travis went on deck to adjust the TV aerial for the Donovan music documentary everybody was watching and spotted how close the shore now was. Mi Amigo ran aground at Frinton-on-Sea in Essex and, after rescue, the future Hairy Cornflake and colleagues, including Tony Blackburn and Tom Lodge, were taken to nearby Walton-on-the-Naze police station. There, they were informed that they were ‘shipwrecked and distressed mariners’ and given free clothing.

OUR REGENERATION

We’re on the 13th Doctor now – although there have been a few extras along the way – but in 1966, Doctor Who embraced its first regeneration. Original actor William Hartnell was ill and becoming difficult to work with, so ‘regeneration’ was created as a way of changing from one actor to another – with the process apparently being envisaged as like an LSD trip. Well, it was the mid-1960s. So Hartnell transformed into Patrick Troughton at the end of The Tenth Planet in 1966, thus establishing a Doctor Who trope. After the elegance and abrasiveness of Hartnell’s incarnation – although he did mellow in time (and space) – Troughton’s Doctor was a more light-hearted portrayal, with his often dishevelled appearance earning him the nickname of the Cosmic Hobo. He also displayed a fondness for playing the recorder. Troughton remained in the role until 1969, when Jon Pertwee succeeded him at the time-travelling alien.