Rewind the 60s - 1962-63

Today Lulu is Rewinding back to the years 1962 and 1963. These were the years when the world held its breath during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and when the assassination of President Kennedy shocked the everyone. Closer to home, the establishment was being shaken by the Profumo affair and the new satirists behind That Was The Week that Was. Today it is Sanjeev Bhaskar, currently starring in the BBC’s 60s period-drama The Indian Doctor, who joins Lulu in the Rewind the 60s studio. Sanjeev explains how his parents were a lot like the characters in his series: economic migrants who came to these shores and experienced a welcome that showed the British at their best and their worst. As we focus on the years 1962 and 1963, we meet Daman and Chand, a couple originally from India who were among the 100,000 people who managed to beat a crackdown on immigration that was introduced in 1962. Together, they made a new and successful life for themselves in Coventry. Actor William Roache joins Lulu and Sanjeev to talk about 50 years of Coronation Street. William is the only one of the original cast who still stars in the show. “Initially I only signed a six-week contract. It’s been a very long six weeks”, he chuckles. We hear about the effects of Dr Beeching’s shake-up of the railways, and meet Robin and Keith, two railwaymen who lost their jobs when 5,000 miles of railways were closed. Charlie Ross celebrates the invention of the lava lamp – brainchild of ex-World War Two fighter pilot and naturist Edward Craven Walker. Walker’s creation - based on an egg timer of all things – would become a classic of 1960s design. And we hear about the freezing winter of '62/'63. It snowed somewhere in Britain every day for two whole months, and those who endured it will always remember that winter as one of the century’s worst. As snow blanketed the country, Trudo, a mother of four living in a remote area of Dartmoor, found herself and her family snowed in. She tells us how she had to brave deep snow-drifts to dig out her sheep who were all buried in the snowfall. We also hear from David, one of the staff at Fylingdales radar station in Yorkshire who, along with his colleagues, was snowed in at work for the best part of a week. Hundreds of them eventually made a dangerous dash for safety across the moors in sub-Arctic conditions: an experience they’ll remember for the rest of their lives.