Friday, 7 March 2025

Daleks and Marvel (and my Dalek movie) March 8th and 9th 1975

This spread (which you can find in the My 1975 Diary 2025 Calendar, which is still on sale, though with a sixth of the year already gone by, you're leaving it a bit late) sees me watching the first episode of the classic Genesis Of The Daleks Doctor Who episode. I'm also enjoying my Marvel comics, which I'd only recently started getting and which were quickly becoming my obsession. The two mentioned here, Planet Of The Apes and Dracula Lives, were the first I started getting weekly, and remained my favourites. I never really was the biggest fan of the superheroes, far preferring these horror and other sci fi stories. My other favourite, Conan, started appearing in the coming months. By the end of the year, these comics had all been amalgamated into superhero titles, which turned out to be way more popular with the kids. 

Though, I learned many years later, none of them ever sold as well as their UK counterparts. The Valiant & Lion and Buster & Cor!! comics you see me reading here sold in the hundreds of thousands every week. This excellent blog tells me Valiant's sales had dropped from 300,000 a week in 1970 to 190,000 a week in 1974, which rather suggests I came into the world of comics just as it was entering a steep decline. Well the Marvel figures (which I can't find but I've been told of) were only ever a fraction of those.

(Totally as an aside, I learn, for the first time, that the Marvel UK editors of my day - Peter Skingley and Matt Softley - were in fact women! They were credited under false names, and were actually Petra and Maureen. Mind Blown!)

Did I ever mention I made a Dalek? No doubt inspired by this story, I made this most likely that summer. Clearly reference was hard to come by, though you'd think I'd be able to consult the drawing I'd done in my own diary and get the number of Dalek Bumps right...


My Records For The Day were What Am I Going To Do With You Baby? by Barry White (not "...Do To You Baby" as my diary suggests), and (blimey) Back In My Childhood Days by Max Bygraves. Catholic tastes, baby. Not necessarily good.






My Books And Where To Find Them...
Richard 
The Third
Findlay 
Macbeth
Prince of 
Denmark Street
Midsummer Night's 
Dream Team
Shakespeare
Omnibus

Comic Tales
From The Bible

Joseph, Ruth
& Other Stories

Space
Elain


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Saturday, 15 February 2025

Half Term Hols & a home movie - Feb 16 & 17 1975

This spread (which you can find in the My 1975 Diary 2025 Calendar, which is still on sale, and getting less and less relevant by the day) sees me preparing to make a movie called Blunderbirds. Something under that title did eventually surface, and somewhere I have the VHS copy of the 8mm film from the time. But my plans of the time, which included space rockets and animation, scripts and costumes, in some sort of Thunderbirds parody, came to little. We ended up doing something that we made up as we went along, with whichever friends were available to play on the day.

Here's the nearest I can find to Blunderbirds, an adventure made the same year called The Blackmailers, starring Jude and her friend Alison from across the road.


My Records For The Day were The Queen of 1964 by Neil Sedaka, and one I have no memory of, My Man and Me by Lynsey DePaul.




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Wednesday, 8 January 2025

Mr Curtis and winning a bar of soap - Jan 9 & 10 1975

This spread (which you can find in the My 1975 Diary 2025 Calendar, which is still on sale, and getting less and less useful by the day) has me drawing a new student teacher, Mr Curtis, who my drawing makes look about forty. I wonder if he ever saw this drawing, and if he would have been flattered. History, ie me, doesn't say. We also learn that Mark Vickery, who went on to be a professional golfer, won a bar of soap in a competition at Scouts.

My Records For The Day were classics by Status Quo and Kevin Johnson, both of which still sound good fifty years later.



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