Oil City before it was slick

Exclusive prequel to the film about Dr Feelgood, Oil City Confidential....

In early 1972 there was a Southend band called Cow Pie. We had a regular Sunday night spot at a seafront pub called the Esplanade, and one Sunday we gave it over to some acquaintances who had a newly-formed group called Dr Feelgood.

A refreshing change from what was regularly on offer and no mistake! Musically, at any rate. Image-wise, the trademark Dr Feelgood had yet to evolve.

At this point Wilko (ie John Wilkinson, with whom, a year or two previously, we had played for about a fortnight in one of our other exciting musical agglomerations) was still featuring his favourite kaftan-type shirt and pudding basin haircut (it was too warm onstage, obviously, for his Afghan coat). John Sparkes, if I remember rightly, was sporting the full Jason King look, with moustache complemented by curly mullet.

It was one of their very earliest engagements, and about a year before they started to get themselves noticed in London.

The drummer of Cow Pie was my old schoolmate Will Birch, later the driving force in the Kursall Flyers and The Records and now finishing off an Ian Dury biography which is to be published in 2010 by Macmillan. (Will_Birch on Twitter)

And just to show that the Cow Pie experience should not be too easily sneered at, another luminary-to-be, Ed Hollis, was kind enough to venture one Sunday night that he found our Friend Of The Devil more engaging than the Grateful Dead original...

I mention this because you might not readily make much of a connection between Eddie And The Hot Rods and the Grateful Dead. And if you believed such a connection might be unlikely you would be misguided. For instance, Graham Douglas (who was of course responsible for Eddie And The Hot Rods' big hit record) was a devotee of the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, Quicksilver Messenger Service and all the rest.

How's about that then, as someone or other used to say?

Anglia: a piece of cake

Exclusive!!! This unique photographic document from the vaults shows the man who designed the 105E Anglia, using only spare Christmas cake and marzipan.

No computer nonsense in those days!

It was going to be Ford's first hatchback - before the cake ran out. A flash of inspiration turned it into a notchback, and a Sixties style icon was born.

Just one of the fascinating images from my forthcoming volume The 20th Century Remembered In Some Old Pictures I Have Just Found.

Look out for news of more....

Shiver me timbers

Bring on the nuclear power, that’s what I say. And be quick about it.

Conditions in our house in the last 24 hours have provided a chilling preview of what life will be like in a few years’ time when we have run out of affordable energy and the Russians have turned the gas off.

The coldest day (and night) so far of this year’s winter coincided with the failure of our central heating and hot water boiler. The temperature inside the house rapidly declined to a point at which leaving the fridge door open would probably have warmed things up.

As well as a sample of a rather unattractive possible future, it provided a touch of nostalgia as well.

Younger readers will not have experienced the days before central heating and double glazing, but in our house it brought back childhood memories of the days when you relied on plenty of eiderdowns and a hot water bottle to stop the shivering as you got into bed, and woke in the morning to find frost on the inside of the bedroom windows.

Bring on the nuclear power. Otherwise the only possible way we might make the energy last is for us all to be a bit more sensible and stop wasting so much of it, but there can’t be a snowball’s chance of that happening.