My Visit to Soho

Michael In The Horizontal Striped Jumper

The Senior Clarke Brothers

Uncle John and my Dad Tom Clarke

My Visit to Soho

It was towards the end of my first year, at Francis Coombe Secondary modern school, that I ventured out to London on the train, with a friend of mine, Paul Dorrington. This was to visit the second hand electrical shops, to buy radio parts. I loved visiting Tottenham Court Road for this purpose and it was on one of these visits that we stumbled across Soho and noticed the strip clubs.

These aroused our curiosity. Paul and I plucked up courage and paid to go in and sit at a table. We could see a nude lady sitting on a chair and were given a sketchpad and pencil and encouraged to draw her picture. I felt I was growing up. Afterwards we paid one or two more visits and became wiser.

When we moved to Wilstone, a village near Tring in Hertfordshire, my

51 radio and television hobby helped me pass the time and kept me out of too much trouble.

5 Our Move To Wilstone

In 1961 we finally moved to Wilstone a village near Tring and Michael and I went to Tring Secondary modern school called Mortimer Hill. I can remember my brother wearing winkle picker shoes and some of the girls from the next village couldn’t help but say oh look at those shoes. They were just different and I suppose they felt threatened.

Michael at Tring School

Michael With His Friend Notice the Winkle Picker Shoes

It was during this time that I taught myself more about Radio and amplifiers.

I became absorbed in this hobby. I met a man in the village called Cluck Turney, who was the man to know about televisions and radios and he gave me a lot of help. He taught me about valve amplifiers and allowed me to build a power amplifier, from all the spare parts that he had. It was a push pull amplifier using two PX4 valves and a triode driver. I had to rewind the driver and output transformers in order to get it working. I learned a lot from Cluck Turney.