How we just missed out on pop stardom

IAN Clark’s story of his band’s mishaps brought back memories of my time in the 1960s as a drummer in a rock band, appropriately called The Flintstones. We played in various venues across Norfolk.

We heard that hughie Green was holding auditions in Great Yarmouth for his Opportunity Knocks TV show, so we applied and were asked to turn up at a theatre in Great Yarmouth on a Sunday morning. If you passed the audition, you came back in the evening to perform on the theatre show. The number we played was a song we discovered on the B-side of some obscure record called Pretend. As we started playing, hughie stood up and came towards the stage waving his hands for us to stop. Looking up at me, he said: ‘Drummer, if I’d wanted a pneumatic drill, I’d have hired one.’ Whoops!

But we passed and got onto the evening show; the winner would get onto his TV show. We came second to a lad who played four mouth organs at once. Sitting out front with hughie was a guy called Shane Fenton, who as his later incarnation Alvin Stardust recorded Pretend and got it into the charts.

Later that year, we were asked to be second band to a Liverpool group called The Big Three who had a record in the charts. They were one of my favourite bands, and I couldn’t wait to meet them. They didn’t turn up; said their van had broken down. In 1963 The Beatles came to Norwich and, again, we were asked to be second band. Would we?! A day later, Steve, our singer, who ran the bookings, got in touch to say we were booked elsewhere that night. ‘Tell them we’re sick, our van’s broken down, tell them anything!’ Being a very honest man, he would not do this. It’s taken us 60 years to forgive him! After this, we thought of renaming the band The Almosts.

John Gilbert, reepham,

norfolk.