Bev Bevan and Jasper Carrott work Christmas con shock!

I told you last week that I really wasn't cut out to work in a shop - but my time at the Beehive department store, in Albert Street, Birmingham city centre, did have its lighter moments, too.

It was September 1961 when Jasper Carrott and I began working there.

It was a very hard winter that year with lots of heavy snow. Thick fog was a regular problem, too, making it impossible for the buses to run and many a time Jasp and I would grope our way home to our houses in Sparkhill and Acocks Green.

Both of us were hopeless timekeepers and we soon devised a scheme that whichever one of us arrived at work first in the morning would clock in the other.

The summer outing to the Cotswolds on an ancient charabanc, snogging with some of the salesgirls was a highlight of my time there, but best of all was when Jasper and I were put in charge of the Christmas grotto.

Throughout December (Christmas used to start then - back in the 1960s), a Santa Claus was hired to give out presents at half a crown a time to the darling little kiddies.

They would sit on his lap (that was allowed back then, too!)

He kept a bottle of whiskey concealed under his red robe, from which he would take a swig between children visiting his "magic grotto". Then he'd breathe whiskey fumes over them whilst inquiring: "And whaat would you like fur chrishmuss, my deah?"

Jasper and I devised a crafty con whilst on Xmas grotto duty.

One of us would take the half crown at the entrance, give the customer a ticket, and he or she would then hand in that ticket at the other end of the grotto in order to get the lucky dip prize.

But during the lunch hour, when the manager was out, we would tell the parents bringing their children straight to see Father Christmas.

"Oh dear, we seem to have run out of tickets," we'd say. "Just give your half crown to the lad at the end there, and he'll give you the present.

After his lunch hour the gaffer would return and ask: "Good business whilst I've been out, was it?"

"No," we'd reply. "Dreadful - hardly been anyone in at all!"

Without a check on ticket sales it was impossible to tell how many customers we'd had - and Santa was too sozzled to know or care.

On good days we would be getting 15 shillings each!

It was whilst at the Beehive that I got my first professional break as a musician. It came via a confident young guy named Brian Hines, who played in a group called Johnny and the Dominators.

We met at night school. He was a Trainee Buyer, too, but at the much posher Rackhams store in Birmingham. Both of our employers had insisted we take our NRDC exams (National Retail Distribution Certificates).

He had seen me play with the Senators and liked my drumming style. He was the most self-assured and ambitious person I had ever met and sure that he was destined for stardom.

He wasn't wrong.

We formed a new band together and called it the Diplomats. He changed his name to Denny Laine and three years later he would be top of the UK charts as lead singer on the Moody Blues brilliant Go Now, then go on to join Paul McCartney's Wings.

But before that there were two fascinating years of ups and downs with Denny Laine and the Diplomats!

I'll reveal all here next week.