Towards the end of the war, when the doodle bugs were dropping on London we actually got some evacuee ‘cockney’ kids into our northern school. They talked in a very funny way, and we could scarcely understand a word they said. When we were convinced that they were not actually Germans in disguise we became quite friendly towards them but they always seemed foreign. The radio was all-important especially ‘Children’s Hour’ and ‘Toy-town’ and Uncle Mac, but we also listened to the News which always seemed to begin with something like: ‘Here is the News and this is Alvar Liddell reading it: yesterday one hundred allied bombers raided Germany, three are missing……..’ And there was Workers’ Playtime with Bill Gates and Music Hall and funny comedians like Vic Oliver and Rob Wilton whose jokes always seemed to involve ‘the foreman’ or ‘the sergeant’. And there were of course all those lovely sentimental wartime songs about bluebirds being over the white cliffs of Dover. Sometimes we had a good laugh listening to Lord Haw Haw. << less