SOME of our stories this week half a century ago are strangely familiar.

The details may have been different, but the situations were roughly the same.

Sadly, they included the work of nasty con artists.

Then, just as now, criminals set up bogus charity appeals in the wake of disasters. Barely a month earlier, the Aberfan coal tip slide had claimed more than 100 lives.

We wrote: “Police today warned of a heartless dealer who is preying on the sympathy of the Swindon public by using the Aberfan disaster fund to make a quick profit.

“The person concerned has been operating in the area over the past few weeks, and the police ask the public to ignore the appeal – for clothing and scrap metal – because they believe it is not being used for the purpose being stated on a leaflet pushed through hundreds of letterboxes.”

Another unhappy story also resonates today: “Swindon police are worried about the number of Swindon’s old folk who have become the victims of men claiming to be ‘jobbing’ builders who are ‘pressurising’ elderly people into paying exorbitant prices by claiming their homes need repairing.”

On a happier note, at least in the sense of physical harm being averted, we also ran the 1966 equivalent of those modern stories about people’s multimedia devices blowing up.

There were no multimedia devices in those days, not unless one counts the radio-camera combination mentioned in Rewind the other week, anyway, but more people than ever before had new televisions.

One was a Limes Avenue woman whose name, Mrs Burn, was grimly appropriate.

We said: “Minutes after a 62-year-old widow had finished watching her favourite comedy programme on television, a deafening explosion rocked the room.

“Terrified Mrs Ellen Burn battled through smoke to try and find out what had happened, but the cause of the fire remains a mystery to her and to neighbours who went to her aid.

“But one thing was apparent…the set had burst into flames without warning.”

Mrs Burn was lucky not to be near the set when the cathode ray tube exploded, and especially lucky not to be sitting in front of it, which would have put her directly in the firing line.

The week also saw us run a drawing of a giant pineapple with an apple for a head, bananas for limbs and strawberries for feet. It was striding purposefully over a map of Britain while holding a telegraph pole.

Strangely, the image it didn’t herald anything worrying, such as Swinging London’s LSD scene making its way along the Great Western Main Line to Swindon.

Even more strangely, it advertised a service of a kind which assorted internet entrepreneurs wrongly think they invented.

Fruit by Wire, almost completely forgotten today, was a little like Interflora but involved bowls of fruit rather than bouquets.

Customers gave their orders at participating grocers’ shops, and hours later the goodies would be delivered to the recipient’s door.

Our advert was placed by fruiterer and florist Les Fitchett, whose shop was at 131 Manchester Road.

A young Swindon accountant called Colin Watkins was anxiously awaiting his call-up papers, even though the last vestiges of British conscription had been removed the year before.

The call-up the 19-year-old faced would come from France unless he took rapid action to avoid it.

We said: “Colin’s mother is French and his father is English. Before National Service was abolished in this country Colin, of Highclere Avenue, often wondered whether he would be called up here or in France.”

Colin told us: “It is a bit worrying, and that is why I am relinquishing my French citizenship and am applying to become a purely British subject.”

We were fond of printing images of newer parts of Swindon as they became thriving neighbourhoods, which is how we came to immortalise part of Shaftesbury Avenue in Walcot when the trees now lining the lake were saplings and the buildings still had their first coat of paint.

As far as we can tell, the junction with Pakenham Road is roughly at the centre of the photograph.

In the business world, a Swindon firm called Caltune Engineering was offering an expert souping-up service to owners of what would become an iconic car of the 1960s.

The MkI Ford Cortina GT was a respectably sporty two-door saloon by the standards of the day, but for £24 Caltune would make it even sportier.

Our motoring correspondent wrote: “The nought to 60mph acceleration time of 12 seconds was slightly better than a new Cortina GT, and the power continued strongly into the 80s with a maximum over 95mph.

“The fuel consumption on a single journey worked out at 28.3 miles per gallon.”

The week also saw us visit Swindon’s only casino, which consisted of three card tables in an upstairs room in Faringdon Road, known as the Ace of Clubs.

“The main card games played,” we said, “ are chemin de fer, poker blackjack and brag.”

Minimum stakes were set at half a crown, or a little over 12p in decimal currency.

The Ace of Clubs may have been smaller and less ambitious than its London counterparts, but unlike many of the casinos in the capital it wasn’t run by gangsters.