Ron, dig out that old Decca favourite again

ONE night in March, 1966, I arrived home to find my mother glued to the family black and white television set, her eyes wide with amazement. "It's Tony," she said. "He's on the telly with his group!"

As indeed he was. For there, with his Elvis-style good looks looming large across the screen, was Tony Newman, the village lad who had once nearly put out my eye with a catapult. Now he was famous.

It's almost exactly 40 years since Midlands pop group Pinkerton's Assorted Colours charted with their only really big British success, a distinctive number titled Mirror, Mirror.

Featuring an autoharp playing the intro, the record peaked at number eight in what was then quaintly called the pop parade.

There's a Worcester chap I bump into occasionally who is a mine of information about the British Beat Boom. I just know him as "Ron" and we've had many a fleeting conversation on the riverbank about the silver-plated Sixties.

So, Ron, if you're out there - dig out that old Decca single once again, and give it a twirl on the Dansette. Just for old time's sake.