Denny & The Diplomats, the Doormobile and the gangster

We managed to get a weekly residency at the Springfield Ballroom, which was located almost opposite the shop, so no transportation worries there, and we soon built up quite a repertoire of songs.

Most were popular hits of the day like Pat Boone's Speedy Gonzales, Little Eva's Locomotion, Tommy Roe's Sheila, Roy Orbison's Sweet Dream Baby, Frank Ifield's I Remember You, Cliff Richard's Gee Whiz It's You and plenty of standard American rock'n'roll stuff by Elvis, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, etc.

We also experimented with a variety of more ambitious numbers too, like the middle of the road ballad My Love For You by Johnny Mathis, the comedic What A Crazy World We're Living In by Joe Brown and the jazzy Take Five by the Dave Brubeck Quartet.

Denny also specialised in some impressive onstage gymnastics, which involved him removing his guitar and embarking on a series of somersaults and backflips!

We were all still at work at this time - me at the Beehive, Denny at Rackhams, Steve at a hairdressers and Phil at the National Provincial Bank in Birmingham. Our date sheet began to get fuller and it was obvious we needed transport of our own to get around in.

We saved some money from a few gigs and invested in a Bedford Doormobile (the one with the sliding doors, that if you weren't careful could slam shut suddenly, crushing your fingers).

It was a right old nail, but we customised it best we could. I "obtained" some carpet for our prized vehicle from the Beehive and we painted it ourselves with a variety of paints we found in our garden sheds.

Unfortunately some of these turned out to be emulsion, which washed off during the first rainfall.

The music scene in and around Birmingham then was amazingly good. Bands of today must envy the sheer amount of venues it was possible to play at - youth clubs, coffee bars, dancehalls, parties, theatres, even the Silver Blades ice rink as the skaters lapped the rink in time with the music.

There was a cinema in Aldridge where you could perform a 20-minute set between the feature film and the B-movie.

The majority of the hundreds of pubs in the area wanted groups to play live - and not just in the evenings - and on Sunday lunchtimes too.

Many of the local parks featured beat groups too and I remember us once playing a show literally ON Edgbaston reservoir, balanced precariously on a large raft. If you dropped a drumstick or plectrum, you'd watch it float away.

Unfortunately, our dear old Bedford van became terminally ill and we were forced to hire one because we'd somehow obtained a gig all the way away in Oxford - a staggering 50 miles from Birmingham.

We hired this van from a hardcase villain we'd met at the Brum Beat Cavern in Summer Row - a far from salubrious venue.

We had been offered £17 for this booking, which was a record high for us at that time. However, the hired van was hardly any better than our own and after struggling up one steep hill too many it blew up completely, some miles outside Oxford.

We had to call on two taxis to load up our equipment and ourselves. The cost was £17.

From this moment we sank further and further in to the red. After the show we needed to stay in a B&B guesthouse, then pay a local garage to fix our broken-down van. But things got worse.

The van broke down again and in a fit of pique we pushed it unceremoniously into a ditch.

Eventually, we got more cabs to get us and our gear to a nearby village railway station and completed our journey back home by train.

Of course the hardcase villain eventually caught up with us, demanding the return of his van.

Denny blurted out: "Don't worry mate. We'll soon get it back to you!"

"Forget the bleedin' van sonny, you can keep the bleedin' van !" growled our Neanderthal gangster.

"Let's just call it fifty quid, eh boys?"