Every Saturday morning I like to lie long in bed, listening to Brian Matthew’s Radio 2 programme ‘Sounds of the Sixties’. It’s an age thing, I guess, but I think you’ll always love the music you grew up with.

And how I grew up! To be young was very heaven, as the poet saith. England in the sixties was the centre of the universe, London was earthquakingly cool, and Chelsea was its epicentre.

Where was I living in my teens and twenties? Chelsea, of course; not the rich, bloated Arab mega-wealth Chelsea of today, but (excuse me lapsing into historical dialect here) the hippest, funkiest, fabbest, grooviest place on the planet.

The King’s Road. Where I knocked down Rudolf Nureyev in my dad’s ’56 Chevy (he was more shaken than hurt, but he had looked the wrong way stepping off the pavement).

Sloane Square, where I charged round a corner and bowled over a tiny little black woman. I helped Diana Ross to her feet.

And Sloane Square of course gave us the name for our group. The Sloane Squares. Everyone had to be in a group in the sixties, and where better to be based than in Chelsea, the capital of cool.

OK, so we were crap. We were no more than a covers band. The few songs we attempted to write were laughably amateur, in the bad sense of the word. But of course we were THE Chelsea group, and any act who came to play in Chelsea got us as their support band.

John Lee Hooker was the first. We’d turned the crypt of the Catholic Church in Cheyne Walk into a ‘night club’ called The Mechanical Orange (how far out was that?) and persuaded big names to come and play.

In other venues we supported other acts. Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, The Creation, Peter Frampton’s Herd, the Small Faces and many more now forgotten or unremembered.

The Faces had been manufactured and backed with a lot of bread — they looked great, but they’d only learned one song and simply couldn’t play their fabulously expensive instruments. I showed Steve Marriott the fingering for the D chord (I’m not a great guitarist but I do know all 5 chords) and he was blown away. He’d stuck mirrors on the glorious patina of the soundboard of his thousand pound Gretsch so he could ‘mak show’ as the Beatles described it. I thought it was sacrilege. He didn’t. He went on to fame and fortune. I didn’t.

Although we were no musicians, we probably got the bookings because of the way we looked. The other guys in the group were good-looking lads. Lloyd Powell on drums, Nigel Hill on bass, Cuthbert Fry on rhythm, Fred Taylor on vocals and harmonica, me on lead — and we rocked. And we were loud. VERY LOUD.

We also were only group in the area with a travelling gang of bodyguards. There was always a fight everywhere we played. If there wasn’t, our bodyguards would start one. More of that some other time.

We thought it was a disaster when Fred left to become a chef. For a while we tried to hack it as a four piece, but we were even worse than before.

Then we met up with Pete Gage, another Chelsea lad. Fred had a good rocking raucous voice, but Pete’s voice verged on greatness. He was a belter, a sort of high-class Chris Farlowe. Suddenly we were getting important bookings. He couldn’t play harmonica and we needed some extra sound, so we drafted in a guy called Dante Smith on keyboards. We were becoming quite a formidable act.

The Sloane Squares, Chelsea, 1966
L to R: Lloyd Powell, Nigel Hill, Gwyn Headley, Cuthbert Fry, Pete Gage
Photo copyright Andrew Lanyon / fotoLibra

In the audience one night was Jet Harris, the former bass guitarist of The Shadows. After the show he came round and bought us drinks. Many drinks. Several times. He drank spirits. I was so impressed. He had so much money. The rounds were always on him. Eventually he started talking about a record.

And that’s what catapulted me out of bed this morning. On the Sounds of the Sixties, Brian Matthew announced ‘My Lady’ by Jet Harris. That was us! Pete Gage (never credited) on vocals, Jet on bass guitar, #28 on the Radio London Hot 40, #1 in Denmark (allegedly). World’s shortest lead guitar solo. It was an awful song, a very lame attempt by Reg Presley of the Troggs, and the B side, written by Jerry Lordan and titled ‘You Don’t Live Twice’, was a far better tune.

Well, well. I hadn’t heard it in years. I long ago lost the only copies I had.

If you want to hear it in all its glory and faux Joe Meek climax, you can, for the next week. Click here to listen to Brian’s show on BBC Radio 2. ‘My Lady’ comes up after about 50 minutes.

It’s truly terrible. But it brings back a lot of memories.

So Pete had clearly hit the big time, and some of the rest of us felt we really ought to be getting jobs, thus the Sloane Squares drifted apart. The last I heard of Pete he had taken over from Lee Brilleaux as lead singer of Dr. Feelgood.

We had a reunion ten years ago, with Fred, not Pete, and we were GREAT!

Yet another update. Before Von named him Milo, this little hound from hell was codenamed GR3, as he is our 3rd golden retriever. GR1 was Lucca, who died of a heart attack aged 4. GR2 was Padi, who died aged nearly 16 last November. They are both loved and lamented.

Now we have Milo, GR3, a bundle of fluff and needle-sharp teeth.

And I’m pleased that this week has seen the arrival of GR3.1, the updated version that doesn’t pee and crap on the drawing room carpet.

Among the many improvements featured in version 3.1 are:

• Stays dry overnight
• Sleeps through the night
• Looks guilty before attempting to steal the cats’ food
• Comes immediately when ‘Bwyd’ (Welsh for Food) is called
• Loves everyone
• Loves marrowbones more
• Has figured out how to use catflap

Here is a list of bugs to be sorted out, with current workarounds:

• Vapourware emitter (do not squeeze too tightly)
• Hiccups (restrict upload speed)
• Chews everything (remove shoelaces)
• System will occasionally crash and revert to version 3.0, detectable by puddles in the hall (transfer to exterior environment immediately following each upload)
• Shrill high-pitched incessant over-excited yapping will be replaced by steady, dignified, sonorous, deep bark in v.3.2. (system needs bedding in)
• Does not always respond to his name unless food is involved (involve food)
• Catflap facility will not be available in v.3.2 due to increased size of application (bloatware is inevitable)

He’s a good-natured little soul. The way he chews my ear when I carry him down to the garden in the morning catches my heart. It may not be to everyone’s taste, but he is so sweet it turns my knees to honey.

What he could have written:

“He came to the task of government in his mid-fifties with excellent and unrivalled credentials. But his character was dour and introspective, with more than a touch of melacholia and insecurity. Above all, he lacked the consummate political adroitness of Blair. Men could never be quite sure what was going on in Brown’s mind. This led to the view that he was a hypocrite; in fact this stemmed from the system which he inherited, the product of the great illusionist Blair.”

What he did write:

“He came to the task of government in his mid-fifties with excellent and unrivalled credentials. But his character was dour and introspective, with more than a touch of melacholia and insecurity. Above all, he lacked the consummate political adroitness of Augustus. Men could never be quite sure what was going on in Tiberius’s mind. This led to the view that he was a hypocrite; in fact this stemmed from the system which he inherited, the product of the great illusionist Augustus.”

From The Oxford History of the Roman World; David Stockton writing about the Roman emperor Tiberius.

Like God, I am older than Israel.

OK, here’s the threatened update.

He is, as everybody agrees, the most beautiful and charming puppy you could hope to see. When he’s asleep.

Of course when he’s awake it’s a completely different state of affairs. Dr. Demento, The Thing From Outer Space, the Spawn of the Devil, Evil Incarnate, That Damned Dog, ChewEverything, Pluto The Dog of the Underworld — he has any number of aliases.

It’s always the same result. You, or your shoelaces, or the Aubusson, or the wistaria, or the formerly budding James Grieve, or anything within reach, will get chewed.

He met Josh Robson, aged 6 months, on Sunday, the first time Milo had seen a baby. Curious, and presumably tasty, so Josh’s hand got chewed. Josh didn’t seem to mind too much.

Yesterday he met Nathaniel Ellis, aged two-and-a-half, the first time Milo had seen a toddler. Curious, and presumably tasty, so Nathaniel got chewed all over. His teeth (Milo, not Nathaniel) are like little needles, so Nathaniel quite naturally objected. Milo countered by going to sleep, thus winning the ‘Ahh, isn’t he cute?’ battle.

He is tremendously energetic for 30 minutes. He’ll then have a meditative chew on any loose part of me that happens to be within reach, failing that, my socks, trousers, jacket, whatever.

He’s not as keen on his food as Padi was when he was a pup, but he has eaten most of the garden, including rhubarb leaves and a castor oil plant. I’m amazed he’s still alive.

And as you can see, it is very difficult to take good photographs of puppies. My admiration for fotoLibra members knows no bounds.

Murder
Rape
Torture
Ranking crimes in order of severity, these are my top three.

Where would I put racism? Not particularly high, as I don’t see it as much of a crime. It’s nasty and stupid. We shouldn’t punish people simply for being stupid, and that’s basically all racism is. Schiller wrote “Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens” — Against stupidity even the Gods themselves struggle in vain. If stupidity leads to a crime being committed, the criminal must be punished. If it results in unfair treatment, compensation must be made. Chwarae teg, as we say in Wales. Fair play.

Discrimination used to be a sought-after attribute. Selection was seen as a good thing. Tom Lehrer commented 50 years ago that the US Military was abolishing discrimination on the grounds of race, creed, sex — and ability. Then, people laughed. Today it’s standard practice.

And today is London’s Mayoral election, a chance for us to remove one of the snidest, sneakiest, duplicitous, power-crazed politicians we in Britain have had inflicted on us in the past 50 years.

One candidate for Mayor announces that she opposes all forms of discrimination and racism. An admirable sentiment, but a dribblingly lunatic statement. All forms of discrimination? So she’d refuse to discriminate between good and bad? Right or wrong? Left or right? She’d drink corked wine and eat bad eggs? I don’t think so. Ah — here’s a clarification: she opposes all forms of discrimination except against The Rich. Hold on — isn’t that discrimination? Discriminating against the discriminating?

It’s not very intelligent to dislike a group of people simply because they act, look, think or talk differently, or have more or less money than you.

It’s quite another thing to fear them, because the fear of the unknown is innate in human nature. A child has no fear of a dog until it gets bitten, or its mother teaches it fear. A child has no racism until it learns it from its peers or parents. A A Gill, Jeremy Clarkson and Anne Robinson must all have been bitten by big black Welshmen in their prams. How else do we account for their baffling hatred of all things Welsh?

Arsenal supporters hate Tottenham supporters, to the extent that many fans would support anyone, even Arsenal’s deadliest rival Manchester United, against the Spurs. And when Cardiff reached this year’s FA Cup Final there was none more furious than the neighbouring city of Swansea (apart from Gill, Clarkson and Robinson of course).

We’re not really allowed to think for ourselves nowadays.

The law has become rigid and brittle. A copper used to give misbehaving kids a clip round the ear; try that now and the resulting court case would be all over the tabloids.

But there needs to be some form of low level punishment. Clarkson and Gill could both do with a good slapping, but nothing more, because who can take them seriously? They set themselves up as buffoons and as such they require to be knocked down from time to time. Robinson was, absurdly, interviewed by the police on a charge of racism for her comments about Wales and the Welsh. If a large WPC called Blodwen had taken her aside and boxed her ears we would hear nothing more about it. Neither would Robinson, for a while.

Fear — usually irrational — and stupidity lies at the core of racism. But fear and stupidity can be a potent combination, as the White House has shown over the past eight years.