According to today's bureaucrats and regulators, those of us who were kids in the 50s and 60s probably shouldn't have survived...
We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles or latches on doors or cabinets and it was fine to play with pans.
When we rode our bikes we wore no helmets, just flip flops, shorts and brightly coloured clackers on our wheels.
As kids, if our family had a car, we would travel without seatbelts or airbags. Travelling in the front was a treat
We drank water from the garden hose and public fountains - not from a bottle. It tasted exactly the same!
We ate dripping sandwiches, bread and butter pudding and drank fizzy juice with sugar in it, but we were never overweight because we were always playing outside.
We shared one drink with four friends, from one bottle or one can and nobody ever got ill as a result.
We would spend hours building go karts out of scraps and then went top speed down the hill, only to find out we had forgotten about brakes. After running into stinging nettles and bushes a few times we learned to solve the problem.
We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back before it got dark. No one was able to reach us all day and no one minded.
We did not have Playstations and X Boxes - no video games at all. No 99 TV channels, no videos, no surround sound, no mobile phones, no personal computers, no internet chat rooms. We had friends. -We went outside and found them.
We played football, elastics and street rounders -and sometimes that ball really hurt!
We fell out of trees, got cuts and grazes, broken bones and broken teeth and there were no lawsuits. They were accidents. We learned not to do the same things again.
We had fights, punched each other hard and got black and blue. We did not get assaulted -we simply lost a fight. We learned to get over it.
We walked to each others homes and school.
We made up games with sticks and tennis balls and ate live things, and although we were told it would happen, we did not have our eyes fall out and nor did live stuff grow inside us.
We rode our bike in packs of seven and wore our coats only by the hood.
Our actions were our own and the consequences were expected.
The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law. Imagine that!
This generation has produced some of the best risk takers, problem solvers and inventors ever. The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned how to deal with them.
BRITISH ICON OF THE SIXTIES - DUSTY SPRINGFIELD
BRITISH ICON OF THE FIFTIES - DIANA DORS
"The only sex symbol Britain has produced since Lady Godiva."
Born Diana Mary Fluck on October 23rd 1931 in Swindon, Wiltshire, Diana Dors was promoted as "The English Marilyn Monroe" and became the quintessential 1950s blonde bombshell, English style. But it was no fluke. Diana set herself a target to become a film star from a very early age and was greatly encouraged by her mother who sent her to the best private schools she could afford. By the age of thirteen the already developing young lass, only just a teenager, entered a local beauty contest and was placed very well. The following year her mother enrolled her in an acting school where she was the youngest in her class.
She landed her first, un-credited film part in 1947's The Shop At Sly Corner and the following year appeared in no less than six movies. It was 1956's Yield To The Night, a film loosely based on the Ruth Ellis case, that won Dors her first rave reviews for the role of a convicted murderess who relives the events that led to her arrest. Throughout the fifties she appeared in numerous films and was always in demand on television in a host of variety spectaculars. In 1967 she featured on the cover of The Beatles' album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Diana Dors was much more than a sex symbol, though, and continued to work long after her sex-symbol appeal had gone. In 1970 she played the ex-wife of Peter Sellers in the movie There's A Girl In My Soup and by the mid 70s she was quite happy to send up her own image as a former screen siren, mainly playing the older sexy woman in a number of film and TV roles. She published two autobiographical books, "For Adults Only" (1978) and "Behind Closed Dors" (1979).
In 1974 Diana had contracted meningitis but miraculously survived. 8 years later, following her appearance in the film Steaming, she was diagnosed as having cancer. On May 4th 1984 this much-loved British actress passed away at the youthful age of 53. A tribute to Diana Dors, "Good Day", written after her death by Ray Davies, is included on the Kinks Word Of Mouth album.
CLASSIC BRITISH MOVIE OF THE FORTIES - THE LADYKILLERS
SCANDAL
Involving sexual intrigue, political subterfuge, a Cabinet minister, a Soviet agent and a teenage prostitute, the Profumo Affair became the most explosive political scandal in Britain in postwar years and precipitated the fall of the Conservative government. To many it marked the end of the straight-laced fifties and the start of the sexually liberated sixties as the public lapped up each new sordid revelation and the press gleefully dished the dirt on John Profumo and cast serious doubts on the efficiency of the security services.
The coolest car ever to take to the road and a true icon of the 1960s the Aston Martin DB5 was launched in 1963 but found immortality when it appeared in the 1964 James Bond film Goldfinger. Modified by effects expert John Stears the movie version was fitted out with all the essential gadgets that any self respecting secret agent would require including retractable rear bullet proof screen, tyre slashers, forward firing machine guns and a passenger ejector seat with removable roof panel. Ideal for the mother-in-law!
HOW INVENTIVE!
Did you know that in 1952 the first commercial jetliner, the de Havilland Comet, was launched and in the 1950s Richard Doll published a seminal study with Austin Bradford Hill that statistically linked lung cancer to cigarette smoking, and that also in the 1950s Christopher Cockerell (on the left of the above picture) invented the hovercraft, and in 1962 Dr John Charnley's hip replacement surgery became reality bringing relief from pain to millions of people around the world? And did you also know that Colin Murdoch patented 46 inventions including the disposable syringe and tranquilliser guns that are used on animals as well as silent burglar alarms? Martin Ryle developed radio telescopes that will capture distant radio waves from the universe. It may seem a small, unimportant invention, but to parents pushing heavy, cumbersome baby carriages, it is heaven-sent: a strong, light, baby buggy they can fold in half: This was invented by Owen Maclaren in 1965. That same year Frank Pantridge invented the portable defibrillator. And finally - did you know that all these inventions and inventors were British?
BRITISH MUSIC CHARTS OF THE 1950s The first British Pop Charts were published in 1952. This article looks at those chart facts and gives titles and dates for every British Number 1 from the 1950s
THE MILLION SELLERS The story behind the 1950s records and recording artists who sold a million or more from 1950 to 1959. The Gold Disc facts and biographies.
