The Saturday Matinee

"Saturday morning could not come quick enough for our family, myself and brother Marty would walk 5 miles to the morning show with a shilling between us. Looking forward to cartoons with Mickey Mouse, on-going serials with the Lone Ranger or Flash Gordon where the end finished with the hero about to come to a nasty end that you had to come back next week to see. The shows usually started with a sing-song generated by a compere, then a different game show like eating a donut on a string the fastest or, my favourite, a singing contest. The first one I won was singing "She Loves You" by the Beatles. I won a big bag of mixed sweets that we shared with all our mates.
I remember walking through the tough winter of '63 up to our knees in snow to get there and most annoyed to find it could not open. I remember thinking "Well, I walked 5 miles, what's the problem!" That's how much we enjoyed our films.
Family outings to the pictures were few and far between but I remember us all going to see "Summer Holiday" with Cliff Richard and The Shadows, we sang those songs for months. And another was on Pole Fair day, 1962, it was raining, just as we were sheltering from it outside the Odeon, the doors opened and they were showing the new Bob Hope/Bing Crosby film "The Road To Hong Kong" so our Dad paid for us all to go to watch it . We laughed so much we cried and still talk about it to this day, it still is one of my favourite "Road" films."

A memory shared by John O'connor.

Sixpence for lollies and ice-cream
"When we were small we were given a shilling to go to the Saturday morning pictures - The ABC Minors we were called. We even had a song we sang before the films began. Sixpence was used to get into the cinema and we had sixpence to spend on lollies or ice cream that was sold from the counter between the entrance and the doors into the theatre. It was always noisy in that area where you would meet up with other kids you knew and see where they were going to sit. I remember the westerns with Hoppalong Cassidy, The Cisco Kid and The Masked Ranger with Silver, his horse, and his sidekick Tonto. I also remember the cartoons Bugs Bunny, Popeye, Donald Duck and all those Warner Bros characters. I have them on DVD and my grandchildren watch them now."

"I was born in Peckham in Furley Road. When I was about 4 we moved to Bird in bush Road next to Camelot school. My mum and dad,Rose and Arthur Dear.were well known in the area. My sister Mary and I used to go to the Regal cinema every Saturday morning along with hundreds of other very noisy kids. Tarzan and cartoons. A man playing the organ which used to come up from the depths and changed various colours.
We all live in Kent and Sussex now but have fond memories of Peckham but would not like to go back there now, changed beyond all recognition."

A memory shared by Susan Capes.

"Lower down the street was the Lyric cinema, The Lyric was always a cut above the Palace cinema in terms of decoration, on Saturdays they held a matinee which featured a live local group and cartoons, kids from Wellingborough all wore the famous ABC club badge. It was a fiasco playing to these kids (I should know...I did it !!) one got pelted with sweets and pennies, for anyone that can't remember our old currency, pennies were large and heavy....and hurt. Above the actual cinema was a club known as the Lynton Hall Palais, no alchohol was served here but yet again live music was the order of the day. I will always remember a drummer in a modern jazz band who would regularly turn up for the gig dressed in a smart shiny suit but wearing tartan carpet slippers with eyelets (the type your granny wore), apparently he could only play drums wearing this strange footwear. (I would be grateful to hear from any readers who remember his name) I feel sure his name was Leon. Many well known bands started their careers playing at 'The Palais' THE SYN' (later to become famous as YES) and JOE COCKER, Joe was from Sheffield (a gas fitter I believe) at the time of his appearance he had his first single out. The Lyric along with The Palais were reduced to rubble in the early 70's to make way for the new Arndale Centre (now known as The Swangate) we lost so much of Wellingborough's character when all these buildings were lost as did many other towns."

A memory shared by Mick Austin.

"Of course you remember it ... well most of us do!!! It all seems so long ago now! but it's beginning to drift up from the fog of 'times gone by'. Hot and damp and steaming gently in the heat of the old Globe cinema at Gosforth (you sold more drinks and ice cream if you kept it very hot!) from the rain sitting there with our knees under chins and feet on the seat with sweaters pulled up to our eyes and pulled down over our knees so we looked like rows of strange beasts, so God help the ice cream girls! There must be about 1000 screaming children rooting for Roy Rogers and Trigger and hell bent on making as much noise as possible! But they never noticed that Roy's hat never fell off in a fight and that he had more lipstick on than Dale Evans his love interest. They would never imagine that poor old Trigger would end up being stuffed and mounted on a plinth outside Roy's ranch.
Hands up if you remember The Perils of Pauline and you must remember Flash Gordon and the Clay Men! , then there was Zorro !, now there was a force to be reckoned with! We all wanted to be Zorro! After the show there we were galloping up the road on imaginary horses with our navy blue school raincoats over our shoulders buttoned at the neck so it looked like Zorro's cloak, with home made eye masks covering most of our faces, brandishing our home made swords with bits of chalk tied to the tip, zizz zizz at any stray dog or any imaginary enemy who came across our path! We left Zorro's mark Z on any door or wall we passed! Zizz zizz and the deed was done and off we went to find another enemy to fight!
I suppose we could all go on for a very long time rekindling our childhood memories of the Saturday matinees we lived for, as in many cases the highlight of our week. So how strange that many years later I found myself the manager of a little cine variety hall in Felling near Gateshead and yes you guessed it! I ran a matinee for the kids, but! they nearly pulled the place apart! Why? Because I was showing the same films that I used to watch when I was small, I had not understood that times had moved on, we did not have TV in my young days and now there was so much more in ways of entertaining and filling their time that it must have been boring for them. So we hit on the idea of showing nothing but 10 cartoons and it worked! 3 minutes of cartoon then cheering and hooting for the next one!
When the twist came out with Chubby Checker's Twisting the Night Away, I decided to run a little competition each week, six kids up on the stage in a line with me standing behind doing the patter and introductions, signal to the projectionist to play the music and off they went, twisting away like little good uns! Then stop the music and I would go along behind them and put my hand on each head and the one that got the loudest applause was the winner, and he got two free seats to next week's matinee and a box of sweets and off they went and back to the cartoons ...
OK! All went well until I noticed that one little lad wearing an open duffle coat and Wellingtons was the winner for six weeks on the trot! Then I noticed that all the usherettes were hanging off a radiator at the back of the stalls killing themselves laughing with tears streaming down their faces at the antics on the stage, so when it was all over I went up to them and asked what they were laughing at and one of them said "Eeee Mister don't you know? The little lad in the duffle coat has his willy out!! And the kids love him!! So that was the end of that idea! But I did go on to greater things..."

A memory shared by David Hinge.