SLOW morning traffic on the M4 made the pages of the Swindon Advertiser in the first week of May a dozen years ago.

Such a hold-up wouldn’t usually have been deemed newsworthy, but that particular one was an act of mass civil disobedience.

The placing of speed cameras by Wiltshire police prompted a protest convoy to drive between the Leigh Delamere and Membury services in lanes one and two at precisely 56mph.

One of the Swindon participants was IT contractor Alan Hayward, who commuted to and from Bath every day.

He said: “Cameras catch normal motorists. They don’t catch tailgating drivers or middle lane drivers. We need more police to catch the 10 percent who are idiots.”

Our reporter described the protest as a celebration of British eccentricity, and added: “Along the route, people waved and members of the media looked on from the bridges.

“Some reports said there were more than 400 motorists getting in on the action, but my estimate would be closer to 200.”

A disgruntled police spokesman said purposely slowing vehicles down was irresponsible.

The 2005 Swindon Festival of Literature was under way, providing a welcome distraction from the ongoing General Election and local election campaigns.

Among the early high-profile participants was Julian Clary, who is originally from Surrey but enjoys honourable Swindonian status as his parents later decided to live in the town.

He was at the festival to promote his new book in a talk with Peter Heaton-Jones at the Wyvern Theatre.

Our reviewer said Julian’s parents were in the audience, and added: “So he sweated a bit when reading an extract from his autobiography, A Young Man’s Passage, which listed around 20 one-night stands (Morgan the Organ, an illegal Albanian immigrant, a French man with wind) and an apology to those who didn’t make the shortlist.”

Another celebrity face in the newspaper belonged to heartthrob actor Jeremy Edwards, who had played healthcare worker Danny Shaughnessy in Holby City and would-be rock star Kurt Benson in Hollyoaks.

Earlier that year, he had been a competitor in Celebrity Big Brother.

The 33-year-old, we said, visited Old Town’s Studio Nightclub during its weekly evening for people aged 14 to 17.

Having been mobbed by the young people, he said: “I don’t normally do under-18s events because you don’t know what they will be like, but this lot were just really nice.

“They were really polite and well-mannered – a really friendly bunch.”

Jeremy went on to become a regular The Wright Stuff guest and appear in children’s comedy Millie Inbetween.

Another nightclub mentioned in our pages that week had been demolished some months earlier, but a romantic Swindon couple paid £350 for one of its few remaining fragments.

Tracey and Dave Griffiths, both 40, lived in Croft Road, but as younger people had been devotees of Goldiggers nightclub in Chippenham.

Thanks to eBay, the two were the proud possessors of an old neon sign from the club, and planned to give it pride of place at a disco they’d built in their garden.

We said: “During the 1980s Tracey was a regular at the club and for six months she worked behind the bar.

“In 1985, aged 20, she met her future husband while strutting her stuff on the dancefloor and they were married four years later.”

Tracey, originally from Chippenham, said: “The club was so popular they used to bus people in from Swindon, Bath and Bristol. I’ve seen some great groups at Goldiggers, including Haircut 100, Yazoo, Feargal Sharkey and Depeche Mode.”

The Goldiggers site was cleared to make way for retirement flats and shops.

Countless Swindon people were saddened when the death of former mayor and Pinehurst councillor Arthur Archer was announced.

Recognised mainly as a decent man who put the interests of ordinary people first, he had been a railway worker for 42 years before being elected in 1996.

His death prompted tributes from political allies and opponents alike.

Fellow Labour veteran Derek Benfield described him as a people person first and a politician second, while Tory stalwart Mike Bawden said: “His involvement with the community in Pinehurst where he lived was outstanding.”

Another familiar Swindon figure, town crier Fred Ferris, was helping to organise the town’s hosting of the British Town Criers Championships at the Town Hall the following month.

He had organised the inaugural competition, also in Swindon, the year before.

He said: ”People said my competition was scrupulously fair last year, and that’s how it should stay.”

We added: “To mark the start of the championship, a piper will lead the competitors, followed by a woman in Victorian dress, through the town centre.”

Fred, who wore a distinctive uniform in GWR colours, served as Swindon Town Crier for more than 15 years.

He died, aged 82, in 2013.