SCOTTISH fans of Bill Haley and his Comets queued up all night outside Glasgow’s Odeon Cinema to get tickets for the band’s forthcoming concert. Inconveniently, it was mid-January, which meant that the temperature was on the wrong side of wintry; conveniently, there was a wastepaper basket nearby, which someone decided would make an ideal if impromptu brazier. A cinema attendant on all-night duty supervising the fans smothered the flames with his gloved hands.

The concert took place on Monday, February 18. It’s worth quoting from the Glasgow Herald review at length: “Before the audience were quite settled with their ice-creams and their bags of nuts. before even the safety curtain had risen, the introductory bars [of the opening song] were finished and the Comets were in full flight... At the very start of the show a polite voice had requested that the audience remain in their seats. The mild laughter and the ripple of applause that had greeted this suggested that whatever might happen elsewhere, Glasgow could take its ‘rock ‘n’roll’ with propriety. At one stage two girls did actually stand up ... but they sat down quickly enough when an official frowned at them in the manner of a benevolent dominie with a restive class.” The review also spoke of Haley “crouched earnestly behind his guitar in that attitude of determination and aggression taught by sub-machine-gun instructors.”