My first visit to this thread. Nice stuff here, if you have the same warped sense of humour as myself.
Allan Smethurst brings back memories - the Singing Postman. He lived in Sheringham, and his mum came from Stiffkey (pronounced locally as Stewky). My dad claimed to know him, but my dad claimed to know everyone in that part of the world. Mind you, he probably did - his work took him to every one-man garage and workshop in every remote village in East Anglia. Some of them were down lanes that seemed to lead to nowhere, a bit like finding Brigadoon. He knew some real old-time characters who spoke such broad Norfolk dialect that they could barely be understood.
To the point - in the song he made famous, he refers to Molly Windley, who smoked like a chimney. I knew the Windleys, they came from Holt in North Norfolk, not far from Sheringham and Stiffkey, and I worked for a while with Tina , whose dad ran an antiques shop. Every other shop in Holt is an antiques centre. It's perfectly possible that Smethurst's Molly was a relation of my friend Tina. Just saying, in my feeble and pitiful attempt to associate myself with fame........
