AN INTERVIEW with a 21-year-old Justin Hayward only merited a photo and a few paragraphs on an inside page of his local paper this week in 1968.

Nights in White Satin had reached number 19 in the singles chart the previous year, but global stardom and rock legendhood wouldn’t come until the 1970s.

In the summer of 1968 the former Commonweal school pupil was still regarded in Swindon as just a local boy making good in the big city.

Adver journalist Robin Wiltshire wrote in his ‘Here and There’ column: “You can only be in one place at a given moment, but I spoke to a young Swindonian this week who is doing his best to find a way around the maxim.

“Harpenden, Helsinki, then Birmingham – all in the space of not much more than a day. That was a typical weekend for 21-year-old Justin Hayward of The Moody Blues pop group.

“Today he is off to Prague, and then after three days he returns only to fly to the South of France for a three-week tour.

“‘It sounds great fun – but it’s a hard way of earning a crust,’ Justin told me when I telephoned him at his London flat.

“‘It’s a very exciting life, but you wish you could split yourself in half sometimes. I haven’t even managed to get home just for a day for seven months. I miss the old town.’”

We added, helpfully, that Justin Hayward was his real name, that his family home was in The Mall, and that his musical CV included the choir of St Saviour’s Church and the Marty Wilde Trio.

In other pop-related news, there was a special endurance event going on at a site now occupied by The Groves Company Inn.

We said: “Disc-jockey Joly MacFie is going to be stuck in a groove for the next 200 hours – hoping to make a record by spinning records.

“At noon yesterday, 17-year-old Joly started a long playing epic in an empty shop at 23 Fleet Street, Swindon – to set up a new marathon record for disc-jockeys.

“Joly, who lives at Lyneham, is unsure of what the existing record is, but intends to spin discs for 200 hours, which means that he will finish at 8pm today week.

“But if he discovers in the meantime that the record is more than 200 hours, he will carry on until he breaks it.”

Joly, a maths and science student at Swindon College, said his ambition was to be either a Radio One dj or go to university. He had been a member of high-IQ club Mensa since he was 15.

There seems to have been no follow-up story about how he fared, nor any other mention of Joly in our archives, but a man of that name appears from online searches to have founded a successful badge-making and publishing company in the 1970s.

Returning to this week 46 years ago, though, by the end of it an alarming amount of Swindon and the surrounding area were under water.

A severe thunderstorm on the Wednesday night overwhelmed drains. Many areas that had been dry land at dusk were lakes by dawn.

Among them was a large section of Queen’s Drive, near what would later become the Magic Roundabout. The unhappy men tasked with clearing the drains had difficulty locating them in the almost knee-high murky water; a nearby pedestrian subway became a submerged cave.

At the Adver’s Victoria Road building, staff arriving on the Thursday morning had to clear away hundreds of pounds of soaked paper on the ground floor before starting work.

There was no flooding at Regent Circus, which was a hive of activity thanks to building work, just as it is today.

We printed a photo of the final extension to Swindon College, which would allow more than 9,000 students to be accommodated. It stood for more than 40 years before the site was levelled to make way for the Regent Circus Development.

We wrote: “One more storey is to be added, making a total of eight, and access from the present building will be on the ground, third and fifth floor levels.

“There will be rooms for television and music studies, and a new single-storey workshop block.

“This site covers 54,000 square feet and the total cost of the block, which is to be completed towards the end of next year, will be about £444,000.”

In other news...

MONDAY, JULY 8, 1968: “MINING students engaged on the BBC-sponsored dig to try to discover the secrets of Europe’s biggest man-made mound, Silbury Hill, beside the A4 near Marlborough, broke through into the open part of Dean Merewather’s tunnel, dug in 1849. Film of the breakthrough was expected to be screened on Points West on BBC1 tonight, and there will be an up-to-date progress report in colour in Chronicle on BBC2 on July 27. For the first time in 45 years it was possible to crawl right to the centre of the hill, 250ft from the mouth of the tunnel.”

TUESDAY, JULY 9, 1968: “MEMBERS of Wroughton Parish Council hit out last night at the policy of Highworth Rural District Council of forcing elderly people to accept central heating in their bungalows. After a clash of opinion during their meeting, the chairman, Mr W McKanan-Jones, gave an assurance that the tenants of the bungalows would be disturbed as little as possible during the work to install off-peak electric heaters.”

WEDNESDAY, JULY 10, 1968: “A MAJOR new one-way traffic system for the centre of Swindon may be in operation by autumn next year. The borough council last night heard a report about the scheme, which has been approved in principle, but has not yet been worked out fully. Detailed draft proposals are to be published soon so that the public can comment or object. Pedestrians would be provided with seven crossings, five of them light-controlled, where people wishing to cross press a button and wait for a green light signal.”

THURSDAY, JULY 11, 1968: “A SQUAD of plain clothes and uniformed police stood guard over a Royal Mail train stranded at Swindon Station. The train is a Royal Mail travelling Post Office. It was en route from Paddington to Bristol when it was held up at Swindon because of flooding on the line between Swindon and Wootton Bassett. The train, with 20 sorters still on board, was shunted into a siding. No-one was allowed into the station.”

FRIDAY, JULY 12, 1968: “AN ASSOCIATION with a difference was the subject of an after-luncheon speech given to Swindon Round Table at the Goddard Arms. The speaker was Miss NA House, of the Bristol Diocesan Association for Family Welfare. The association, explained Miss House, dealt with unmarried mothers and illegitimate children. ‘And because of that we are unique in that we are anxious for our numbers to drop!’ she said. But, she continued, this was not the case. Miss House represents the association in Swindon, and there have been 90 cases reported to her in the town this year. Of these, 10 were girls of 15 years old or under. ‘Our job is rather like a jigsaw puzzle. We help in the adoption of these babies, and we have to fit the baby to the potential family who will adopt it.’”