Bev Bevan Diaries: Keeping the girlfriends hush hush

AFTER our run-in with Harold Wilson in 1967, Flowers In The Rain had reached No 2 in the charts and we'd got a new deal with Regal Zonophone, a label that used to be exclusively for the Salvation Army!

The Daily Mail reported that I was proud of my red waistcoat edged with bobbles. Mind you, I was only 22 at the time. It was serious business, I tell you!

Ace Kefford told the world that he was ready to vote for a new Prime Minister - as long as it was Jimi Hendrix. He wanted Jimi to stand with a view to replacing Wilson.

Our brush with authority was seen to have given us credibility and maybe we should, at that stage, have lived up to it.

But if anything we were more a pop band. We went out of our way afterwards to play the Wilson thing down, to say that no, we were really nice guys despite all the publicity.

When the next record, Fire Brigade, was released in 1968, it was definitely more poppy. It was as if to say, well it's only pop music after all.

Christian

Cliff Richard wasn't sticking to his guns either. He'd announced that he was ready to quit to be a full-time Christian. In the end he decided to carry on regardless.

Tom Jones was about to become a millionaire thanks to a 13-week booking in Las Vegas. What were we doing wrong? We still had whip-rounds before buying a round at the local pub.

There was a new Sunbeam Rapier out that did a ton, and we wanted one. Badly.

There was something else we wanted badly, to be able to tell the truth. After the Wilson controversy we'd drifted apart from our manager Tony Secunda, who was responsible for all the hype.

Trevor told the press that he didn't think girls had much sense of humour (he was probably stoned at the time) and that resulted in a flood of angry letters from female fans.

In fact, we all had girlfriends but we weren't allowed to admit it. The image of the pop star was far too important to let your personal life intrude on it. We had to keep it secret.

Buses permitting, I was going out with Val, and Ace had been living with a girl for years but it all had to be kept 'hush hush.'