Mallory Park

Mallory Park is a motor racing circuit in the East Midlands of England and was among the venues used for Radio One “Fun Days” in the 1970s. A favourite story of John Peel was about attending such an event on May 18, 1975.

Fun Day With The Rollers
(from The Radio One Story)


 * The finest event that I’ve ever been to with Radio One was a Radio One Fun Day at Mallory Park. The Mallory Park circuit has a large lagoon in the middle of it and a couple of small islands at one side, and the Bay City Rollers were billed to appear, so hundreds and hundreds of small people in very expensive and badly fitting Bay City Rollers chic – if such a thing is not a contradiction in terms – turned out there as well.


 * The Bay City Rollers were being helicoptered onto the small island one at a time. Now the only security available were – for reasons that I have never known, but I don’t want to know really, it’s just the whole thing is so wonderful – were members of the BBC sub-aqua club.


 * So you got these rather short and stubby, sort of like tree trunks dressed up in tartan, and they are coming across the grass, and they start wading across this weed-filled water, which was disgusting. And the sub-aqua people were sort of standing there in their rubber outfits, with flippers and stuff like this, catching these strange children and carrying them back and sort of dumping them on the other side of the bank, who were pushing them back in the water. And the helicopters coming overhead and Bay City Rollers and lots of car noise and screaming.


 * While all of this was going on, Tony Blackburn was speeding backwards and forwards on the lagoon in a speedboat, driven by a Womble. And I just thought, “If I live to be 200 years old, I am never going to experience anything like this again in my life.”

Links

 * Wikipedia: Mallory Park
 * Radio Rewind: Fun Days