• Welcome to this forum . We are a worldwide group with a common interest in Birmingham and its history. While here, please follow a few simple rules. We ask that you respect other members, thank those who have helped you and please keep your contributions on-topic with the thread.

    We do hope you enjoy your visit. BHF Admin Team

Childhood Memories

Re: Cadbury's Bournville

Pretty good, though thinking about it now it was probably a scam. If his method of predicting footie results was any good he`d be living a life of Reilly in the carribean.

Yes indeed! I remember thinking at the time, Why would anyone sell info on how to win the pools? I was only interested in listening to the music...

This is a fascinating topic as we all share many common memories.

Dave A
 
Re: Cadbury's Bournville

It was Horace Bachelor and his famous "Infra Draw Method" and I believe it was in Keynsham Bristol. How about that for memory?

Dave A

Not totally Dave: you forgot to tell us how to spell K E Y N S H A M.
s087.gif



Billy Cotton had a radio programme on BBC Light Programme - Sunday am, I think and later one on Saturday evening BBC1 B/w tv.

Those were the days when tv, on Saturday evenings was worth watching more so than what is on offer now!
 
Re: Cadbury's Bournville

Pretty good, though thinking about it now it was probably a scam. If his method of predicting footie results was any good he`d be living a life of Reilly in the carribean.

Not really a scam. If he sold millions of lines each week, then law of averages states that someone would win something, from which he then took his cut. He would always boast that he had winners every week. It may be true, even if they only won a few bob. He must have made a good living out of it. Even in those days, everything being relevant, his radio adverts were not cheap.

When the top win was £75,000, did you know that the only man to win that twice was the bandleader/drummer Ray Ellington?

Eddie
 
Eddie, you`ll get into trouble nicking the lovely Les Dawsons jokes.

I know Smudger, but someone has to remember the good old jokes. Les was wonderful.

Like, where we lived they knocked down the houses and built slums, or, until I was nine, I thought a knife and fork was jewellery.

Eddie
 
Re: Cadbury's Bournville

Not really a scam. If he sold millions of lines each week, then law of averages states that someone would win something, from which he then took his cut. He would always boast that he had winners every week. It may be true, even if they only won a few bob. He must have made a good living out of it. Even in those days, everything being relevant, his radio adverts were not cheap.

When the top win was £75,000, did you know that the only man to win that twice was the bandleader/drummer Ray Ellington?

Eddie

Many moons back, i checked my Littlewoods footie coupon & i had 8 draws, but sadly that week there was a boat load of draws & i won just over a £1000. Still, better than a slap in the face with a wet kipper. Eddie, was Ray Ellington any relation of Duke Ellington?
 
I don't know about anyone else but as I become older I realise that my memory is Very selective, if you speak to some one you know, about a past happening, a person, or a place, they will have different memories than you about the same subject. Recently I was speaking to an old military mate, about something in NI, and we kept saying do you remember so and so, and that pub in so and so, it was you mean the so and so name , no it was this, Oh Yes, and about Bob so and so , he left in 71, no he left in 75, remember we were at so and so, Ho Yes that's right. Paul
 
I know Smudger, but someone has to remember the good old jokes. Les was wonderful.

Like, where we lived they knocked down the houses and built slums, or, until I was nine, I thought a knife and fork was jewellery.

Eddie

Or "Our kitchen ceiling was so low the only fish we could cook was plaice"
 
Re: Cadbury's Bournville

Many moons back, i checked my Littlewoods footie coupon & i had 8 draws, but sadly that week there was a boat load of draws & i won just over a £1000. Still, better than a slap in the face with a wet kipper. Eddie, was Ray Ellington any relation of Duke Ellington?

Still Smudger. Back in time a £1000 was a nice little win.

No, Ray Ellington, although also black, was English, and Duke Ellington was an American.

Eddie
 
Re: Cadbury's Bournville

Catching up here.......Ovaltine was not a Cadbury product by originally Swiss. A Wander who had their factory at Kings Langley, Herts.

Another radio program aimed at five- to fourteen-year-olds, The League of Ovaltineys, was broadcast to Great Britain by Radio Luxembourg on Sunday evenings at 5:30 PM. Beginning in February 1935, it was broadcast until September 1939, when the outbreak of World War II forced closure of the station, and again after the war from 1952. Like with the US program, listeners could obtain badges, pins, and secret codes. The Ovaltineys' advertising jingle was regarded as one of the most successful jingles of the era.[SUP][3][/SUP] and featured the iconic English singing trio The Beverley Sisters

Kings Langley was the site of the factory making Ovaltine; the listed factory facade is now all that is left and still stands alongside the railway line among a new housing development. The Ovaltine factory itself has been converted into a series of flats and duplexes.
 
Re: Cadbury's Bournville

Not really a scam. If he sold millions of lines each week, then law of averages states that someone would win something, from which he then took his cut. He would always boast that he had winners every week. It may be true, even if they only won a few bob. He must have made a good living out of it. Even in those days, everything being relevant, his radio adverts were not cheap.

When the top win was £75,000, did you know that the only man to win that twice was the bandleader/drummer Ray Ellington?






ddie

I didn't even know he'd won it once. I'd probably left the country by then...

Dave
 
I don't know about anyone else but as I become older I realise that my memory is Very selective, if you speak to some one you know, about a past happening, a person, or a place, they will have different memories than you about the same subject. Recently I was speaking to an old military mate, about something in NI, and we kept saying do you remember so and so, and that pub in so and so, it was you mean the so and so name , no it was this, Oh Yes, and about Bob so and so , he left in 71, no he left in 75, remember we were at so and so, Ho Yes that's right. Paul

sorry to but into thread .did you serve I N.I I was there (as a child of 7) for five years when we moved from brum in 1967 to 71 Lisburn , tildarg avenue
 
As a child I roamed across this North Perry Barr/Kingstanding area. We had a local play field complete with brook by that curved road in the top of the pic. Zoom in and see reminders of WW2 with army huts in Perry Barr park and some bomb demolished houses in a suburban road. There were dangers such as 50ft high ash tips and the Tame Valley canal had to be treated with care. The River Tame was so polluted we kept away from it. Walsall Rd on the left with Tucker Eyelets, Hawthorn Rd/Dyas Rd top right, a Zig Zag bridge on the Aldridge Rd, and Lucas's Sports ground also in the pic. Zooming in will show at least five pubs with names like 'Drakes Drum' and 'Safe Harbour'. Bottom of the pic, Holford Drive and some of Kynoch's factories, and I remember the noise of their ammunition testing heard across the district. Lots of other features to numerous to mention ...
(With Windows zoom in with a click on the pic and use grey scroll bars to move around)
(With iPads tap the pic and finger move around it)

1947
1947image.jpg

Today's view with the elevated M6 going through our local play field and across the view. Tucker Eyelets has gone but the Lucas field is still there. Lots more warehouses/factories in view and as far as I know all the pubs still exist. Perry Barr park now has a new sports stadium. The canal is of course still there as is a much cleaner river.
2016
2016image.JPG
 
Spent the first 25 years of my life around here and remember how the Walsall road used to be, considerably different nowadays of course, no tank traps for one thing :)
 
Last edited:
I can only remember them between Tuckers and near to the air raid shelter by Perry Avenue, they were certainly there when I did my paper round from Townsend and Dennet's paper shop/post office, that would have been up to 1960.
 
Eric, I remember Billy Cotton, first on the radio with Alan Breeze Sunday lunchtimes and later on the tele, preceded by Two Way Family Favourites, and afterwards either the Huggetts or Archie Andrews, The Navy Lark and Clitheroe Kid (I didn't like that one). As soon as Movie-go-round came on we had to leave to go to Sunday School. Life with the Lions, Whacko with Jimmy Edwards, Ray's a Laugh and Life of Bliss with Psyche the dog played by Percy Edwards. (Funny what you remember isn't it?) Not sure which came earliest as they're all jumbled up in my mind now. Although possibly later, my favourite was Round the Horne and I still listen to repeats of that sometimes on radio 4. I'll never know how they got away with some of the things they said!
 
As well as the area in post#39, I roamed or travelled to grandparents across this area but some years later than the 1938 date of this image.
Red dot marks the Hare & Hounds Pub on the Kingstanding Rd.
Green dot marks a gap between the houses in Atlantic Road - why was it not built upon ?
Yellow dot marks the Kingstanding Rd-Hawthorn Rd-Dyas Rd-Warren Farm Rd junction.
Blue dot marks a sand quarry off Dyas Rd ... the 'cliffs' were as high as houses.
Mauve dot marks Kingstanding Rd Drill Hall with Co op dairy next to it and Goodway Rd to the right.
Orange dot marks Cavandale Ave unfinished in this image but finished by the start of WW2.
Most of the dot-marked places on the pic have been mentioned in various posts on the froum.
Click or tap on the pic to enlarge it ... use scroll bars to move across it.
Dyas__Road__1938.jpg
 
Last edited:
I can see my house in Birdbrook Road (212) in that picture, it was opposite open ground when I was there which I think later became built on as a driving test centre.

The sand pits were still there too, I used to get off the bus on Kingstanding Road and take a short cut across the top down to near my front door.
 
This pic of a tram on the Bristol Rd brought back memories of trips to the Lickey Hills.
Bristolrdtram.JPG

I had a play with my laptop to colour the pic ... I've got greener grass on the Edgbaston side !
BristolRdabbw.JPG
 
Last edited:
The privet hedges on the sides of the tram track must have kept someone busy hand-clipping them in those days. I was never any good at water colouring and have no crayons so I colour in on computers after I saw someone else on the forum do it ... :D
 
I have just re-called a real blast from my childhood.

A friend has shown me a box of old 78 r.p.m. records that was collected, many years ago, from the local village school.

The records are all country style music dancing for young children. I well remember experiencing this sort of school activity, in the early 1940's.

A teacher would wind up the old style gramophone, place the record onto the turntable, and we, boys and girls, would attempt to dance. Usually either in circles, or in line, to the music.

In those days this was considered 'state of the art' for us young children, and we enjoyed it. It was the very first time that I actually got to dance with the girl who was my first 'love'. . We were both around seven years of age !

Now, in schools music is performed in every form, from choirs, to classical music students, to jazz & rock bands.

Eddie
 
Eddie,

Same here in Junior School, but as soon as I moved to senior school, that disappeared from the curriculum, as did the girls as I then went to an all boys school, where such things as performances of Gilbert & Sullivan operas entailed some dressing up as ladies. Not quite the same thing! :-)

Maurice
 
Back
Top