A TRANSATLANTIC disco culture clash at Swindon’s top nightclub was among the Adver’s offering to its readers this week 38 years ago.

“Brunel Boogie Floors the Yanks,” said a splendid headline we ran in early June.

The story beneath it seemed to begin with a quote from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, but all soon became clear.

We wrote: “There’s nothing, but nothing, feller, like a dame.

“Sez you – if you’re a Yank. In their old-fashioned, matriarchal-orientated society they’re a bit fuddy-duddy, it seems.

“One American girl disco fan from the USAF base at Fairford who visited the Brunel Rooms said she’d got a ‘cultural shock.’

“Sgt Darrilyn Young, 25, and her friend Carleen Funk, 22, are the first single US Air Force girls in uniform to be posted to the Fairford tanker site.

“And when they went to the Brunel Rooms and other discos in Swindon they were plain disappointed.”

If they were expecting Saturday night fever, they received barely a politely-suppressed sneeze.

The two told us they were bewildered to discover not only that no men asked them to dance, but that no men asked other women to dance, even though men and women often arrived and left together.

The gist of their complaint seemed to be that in America it was traditional for men to ask women to dance.

Darrilyn said: “It’s very disappointing really. The local boys just don’t want to dance with us. They get up and dance with each other and the girls do the same thing. It’s real weird.”

Brunel Rooms boss Bill Reid said of America: “Dancing is entirely different there. Here in Britain we’re much more casual.”

Debenhams in the town centre was visited by a famous customer with experience of life in a department store – albeit a famous fictional one.

Trevor Bannister, who left his role as Mr Lucas in Are You Being Served? that year, was appearing at the Wyvern Theatre in a farce called Your Place or Mine? but the choice of a menswear department for a publicity shot was inevitable.

His co-star in the play was Deborah Watling, who was and still is best known for playing Doctor Who companion Victoria Waterfield opposite Patrick Troughton in the late 1960s.

Our reviewer said of the Wyvern play: “The stop-and-go sex situation between two people who have just met turns out to be less immoral than might be expected.

“Trevor Bannister pursues the girl with the weary good humour of a friendly bear chasing a bun attached to a piece of string.

“Debbie Watling shrilly fences him off, then urges him on. Moments of high farce and glowering lust are blended in a package of theatrical goodies straight from the laugh factory.”

Cheery cheekiness was also the theme of a competition we ran to promote a new sauce brand.

“Sunny Sauce,” we said, “is a new, spicy brown sauce from Mellor’s, in conjunction with whom we are running the contest.”

The reader who came up with the best caption to a seaside postcard-style image including Sunny Sauce and a sausage could look forward to a Sovereign Holiday worth £200.

In addition, the senders of the first 100 entries would receive a copy of Bamforth’s Saucy Postcard Annual.

We added: “The theme of the competition makes it suitable for adults only.”

Copies of the book can still be found for sale online, while Sunny Sauce – or the British one, at least – seems to have vanished without trace.

Thankfully a happier fate was in store for another business we publicised that week.

Swindon had its first new brewery in a century, courtesy of Mark ‘Archer’ Wallington and his wife, Wendy.

Mr Wallington, 35, said: “There is a market for real ale in the town. When you think there were seven little breweries in the area at one time, including Bowlys in Old Town, there must be a demand.”

The brewery is in business to this day, although Mr Wallington now has a different local brewery, Weighbridge Brewhouse.

The week’s stories also included the latest dispatch from a planning battle between a Swindon family and Thamesdown Borough Council.

Several years earlier Westcott Street, off Westcott Place, had been earmarked for redevelopment. The terraced houses and local pub, the Gardeners Arms, were to be swept away and replaced by new properties including homes for elderly people.

By the middle of the decade only council worker Richard Uzzell, his wife, Betty and son Kevin remained at their home, number 6. They said the money offered by the council for the house they owned and had lived in for many years wouldn’t buy anything similar in the area.

By June of 1979, many councillors were angry and determined to force the family out. It was agreed to consider an enforceable compulsory purchase order with the backing of the Secretary of State.

Mr Uzzell told us: “I have lived here for 24 years and I will have my Christmas dinner here. The council have just not offered me enough money. They have offered £6,000 – but where in Swindon can you get a house in good condition for £6,000?

“If they want our home that badly why don’t they pay the money?”

It was another five years before the council came up with an acceptable offer and the Uzzells moved out. The house was demolished in 1984, two years after being pictured on the cover of XTC’s Ball and Chain single.