100 years ago

Fashions in their extreme, such as the crinoline or the hobble skirt, were attempts not to clothe the body but to subject it to a purely abstract design.

Their sum was to transform a woman from a human being into a decorative fantasy which amused because of the humanity disguised in it. It was, perhaps, that when women wore huge hats and tight fitting skirts, they were trying to look like moving flowers.

At any rate, they were doing their best not to look like women, and they were never satisfied for long with their caprices of disguise.

50 years ago

Britain’s most eligible bachelor boy – Cliff Richard – plus his friends and backing group The Shadows, would shortly make a personal appearance at York Rialto.

All tickets for the show had gone two weeks before, within hours of being put on sale. “I could have sold 10,000,” said Mecca-Casino manager Don McCallion. He had had 3,000 inquiries for tickets before bookings opened.

He estimated that even since the tickets were sold he had had close on another 2,000 inquiries. Requests to meet Cliff and The Shadows were arriving at the Rialto every day. Between them, they had almost monopolised the top placings in the Hit Parade this year. Their film – The Young Ones – had done boom business and helped restore faith in that weakest branch of British show business, the musical film.

Their new film – Summer Holiday – was in York this week. Box office records were being set up at almost every theatre where it played. Cliff was the golden boy of Britain’s pop music. He had come a long way since the days of Oh! Boy, Jack Good’s Saturday evening pop music show for ABC Television, which had really put him on the road to success.

25 years ago

Traffic had been banned from a York street for four weeks as workmen dug for a missing robot camera worth £10,000.

The remote-control camera went AWOL as it was inspecting 19th-century sewers in Penley’s Grove Street, Monkgate. York City Council engineers were mounting a rescue attempt to save the camera, which was stuck nearly 20 feet under the street. They had sealed off the road, causing diversions for motorists, as a three-man team tried to reach the device. The camera belonged to a Rotherham contracting firm.

“I wouldn’t like to say how much it is all costing,” said a spokesman for the city council’s engineer and surveyor’s department. Work to dig up the sewer system had just started and the spokesman continued: “We have closed the road to get to the camera and to see if anything is amiss with the sewer.”