Get My 3 Kids Out Of Russia says Mrs Maclean

Sunday Pictorial dated Sunday 12th January 1958

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Donald Maclean was one of the Cambridge group, along with Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt, who spied for Soviet Russia.

Maclean and Burgess defected to the USSR in 1951 having been alerted by MI6 agent Kim Philby that arrests were probable.

Maclean left his pregnant wife and two children behind, but they joined him in Moscow in 1953. Maclean’s heavy drinking and affairs, along with Melind’a dis-satisfaction with life in Russia, probably led to this plea to get her children back to England.  In fact they all stayed in Moscow until 1979 when she and the now grown up children left for the West. Donald Maclean died in Moscow in 1983 and Melinda died in New York in 2010.

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The 19-year-old au-pair from Holland, Mary Kriek, was found murdered in a ditch near Colchester. She disappeared on the 5th January 1958, after getting off a bus only yards away from the house where she was employed, and her body was found the next day 10 miles away. She had been viciously beaten about the head.  Despite a wide-ranging investigation the case remains, to this day, unsolved

In January 1961 the body of 20 year-old Jean Constable was found close to where Mary Kriek’s had been.

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R-875 or Dextromoramide was discovered in 1956 and was used to treat pain and, in combination with other drugs, as an anaesthetic. Its main proprietary name was Palfium but was discontinued in the UK in 2004 because of how addictive it was compared to morphine.

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It beggars belief that a member of the Local Council can be so out of touch with reality that he doesn’t realise that increasing someone’s rent from one sixth of their income to one third would cause financial problems. Actually, then as now, it doesn’t really surprise.

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The threat of Nuclear oblivion aside, the 1950’s were an optimistic time especially when it came to the benefits computers were going to bestow on our world. They would solve all the World’s problems, give us more leisure time than we’d know what to do with and even replace politicians. Pity the hardware looked like something out of an early episode of ‘Dr Who’.

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For only £10 9s 6d you can become the next Rock’n’Roll sensation, but don’t forget to pick a suitable name – Marty Wilde, Cuddly Dudley, Red Price, Dickie Pride, Vince Eager, Conway Twitty, Rory Storm, Wee Willy Harris, Billy Fury, Eden Kane, Screamin’ Lord Sutch – sorry all taken.

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I see a great answer for Alexander Armstrong’s  ‘Pointless’ quiz. If the question were to name as an obscure as possible presenter of London Palladium’s Beat the Clock surely the portly actor Robert Morley would get you a zero.

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The English Coronet Camera Co. introduced this stereo camera in 1953 and it produced 4 pairs of 3D photographs on a reel of 127 type film.

If you are interested (and know where to get some 127 film (and get it processed)) there are a couple of these cameras on E-bay at the time of posting.

Anyway I was a Scott's Porridge Oats lad myself. With the cream off the top of the milk and Golden Syrup! They hadn't invented cholesterol in 1958.

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If you want to hear this gem you’ll need a copy of the CD ‘Just About as Good as It Gets! Great British Skiffle Vol. 3’.  By the way the ‘B’ side of the single was that old whistle-along favourite ‘Boodle-Am-Shake’.