100 years ago

THE new Post Office, which had been erected in Wide Street, Selby, at a cost of about £2,000, would be in possession of the postal staff at the end of this week.

The new structure, which was of red brick and centre-arched windows on the ground floor, adjoined the old Post Office, being built on the site on which formerly stood an interesting Elizabethan house.

The new building, which was an ornament to the street, afforded the increased accommodation necessary for the Selby postal business.

Ten years before, the average weekly number of letters was 20,000; it was currently about 40,000.

50 years ago

The Candid Camera sequence of children eating ice cream was one of the funniest things we had seen on television for a long time.

This weekend, ABC’s candid camera team were on the prowl again. Jonathan Routh would turn up as a sleeping diner, who caused problems for other people at his table; an interpreter becoming confused over a marriage proposal; and Miss Candid Camera would surprise a passer-by who helped to tie on her apron, by suddenly increasing her waistline.

If you thought that these situations would provide some rich humour then, we were urged, to watch out for the final sequence, when a pillar box talked back to a GPO customer. After posting a letter, he would be politely told that the envelope was not addressed correctly.

25 years ago

A prickly row was cooking between a local radio station and the RSPCA over a broadcast about baked hedgehog.

The recipe for the old gipsy delicacy was part of a new series on traditional fare. But the programme had been condemned by a leading RSPCA official as “irresponsible”.

Chief Inspector Chris Holt said he would be approaching the station to voice his concern over the proposed programme. Listeners to the mid-morning show would hear a demonstration of how gipsies baked hedgehogs in a clay mould.

The feature included the sound of the mould being cracked and the baked hedgehog popping out. Despite the criticism, a spokesman defended the idea.

“I am surprised at the trouble this has caused as I think it’s something to be proud of in one way.

“Baking a dead hedgehog seems a sensible use of resources. People eat pigs and cows and this was a free range animal that unfortunately got killed.

“I am not advocating hunting the creatures.”

The hedgehog used in the feature had been killed in a road accident sometime before, and kept in a freezer.