A CONTROVERSIAL pop singer was ordered not to take a Swindon stage this week in 1965.

Being controversial could be accomplished with only fairly modest effort 53 years ago.

American expat PJ Proby had managed it by ‘accidentally’ splitting his trousers on stage earlier that year, and Screaming Lord Sutch worried many a parent thanks to gimmicks such as being carried onstage in a coffin.

The young man who wanted to appear at the ballroom of Swindon’s best known department store went rather further.

We said: “The blond-haired ‘horror’ pop singer Rip Van Winkle arrived in Swindon last night and was stopped by police from entering the ballroom where he had been billed to appear.

“As screaming teenagers chanted for him to appear, police asked the 25-year-old singer to ‘stay in your car.’

“The management of McIlroys banned the singer – he uses sheep’s entrails in his act – when they heard details of it.

“George Peters (his real name) arrived shortly after the dance at McIlroys had begun. For a while he sat in his car outside the ballroom.

“He told an Evening Advertiser reporter: ‘This is ridiculous. I give the kids only what they want. They appear to want horror, otherwise I wouldn’t be in the business.”

Exactly what the young man did with the entrails was not made clear, but as he also brought along a life-sized model of a human body his act probably involved some form of mock dissection.

We can find no further mention of the performer in our files. Unusually, there seems to be no trace of him online, even among sites devoted to the most obscure performers of yesteryear.

Perhaps a Rewind reader can enlighten us.

There were no such problems at another major Swindon music venue, where one of the most popular acts of the day played a storming set to a young audience undaunted by an absence of alcohol.

“Animalmania hit Swindon last night when the top ten group The Animals appeared at the Locarno Ballroom. The Geordie group sang to almost a packed house even though the weather and the lack of a licence was expected to dampen enthusiasm.

“While the group sang there was no screaming, which, said singer Eric Burden, ‘is the way we like it.’

“He added: ‘We are trying to create an audience who will listen and appreciate the numbers we are doing.’”

On the night when Rip Van Winkle, his human effigy and his package of sheep viscera arrived in Swindon, there was also trouble in much more staid surroundings barely a couple of hundred yards away.

“Swindon police,” we said, “were called to the Town Hall last night when a meeting between fox hunting supporters and their opponents became out of hand. Two policemen remained in the hall until the meeting closed, and a police car was outside the town hall as the supporters left to the strains of D’ye Ken John Peel and the sound of a hunting horn.”

Speakers included Raymond Rowley, chairman of the League Against Cruel Sports.

One hunt opponent, Marlborough councillor Gordon King, compared hunters to the delinquents who regularly gathered at holiday resorts for Bank Holiday fights.

He asked: “Can you see any difference between the young people who arrived in seaside resorts last year and the instinctive disruptive blood-lust of the hunters?”

On a more tranquil note, there was praise in high places for Queen’s Park, the last phase of which had been completed the previous year. In those early days it had the large glasshouse which is fondly remembered by older local people, but which eventually succumbed to repeated storm damage.

Neil Abbott, head of the School of Architecture in Cheltenham, told a meeting of the North Wilts Society that Swindon Borough Council had shown wisdom in turning a clay pit into one of the finest parks in the area.

We added: “The park, he said, had grown in bits and pieces, which meant a careful selection of trees and shrubs. It was full of interest derived from various zones, each with its own character.”

A rather older example of local skill and enterprise had just been refurbished at the Railway Works.

We said: “Probably the last steam locomotive in the Swindon area, the Castle Class Pendennis Castle, which has been bought privately, is now receiving its final clean and polish at Swindon Railway Works.

“The locomotive, No 4079, underwent trials satisfactorily between Swindon and Wootton Bassett last Thursday.

“There are only a few Castles left in service, and a Swindon Railway Works spokesman said there are no steam locomotives still in operation in the Swindon area.”

Already more than 40 years old, Pendennis Castle went through various owners and a long stint in Australia before being returned to the UK. It is currently being restored at Didcot Railway Centre.