SUCCESS
In February 1973, EMI contacted us and asked us to travel to London so we could receive our competition prize at a special presentation.
Unfortunately, the day of the presentation (8th March) coincided with one of our gigs that had been arranged for ages. We said that we wouldn’t cancel our gig and they respected that.
We told them that we had to be at the gig (in Durham) for about 7pm and the only way we could contemplate getting to London for the presentation and then back to Durham in time, would be if we travelled by Aeroplane! Cheeky or what?
Amazingly, EMI said, “Yes, that’s OK, we’ll pay for that”.
So, it was arranged for us to fly from Newcastle Airport to Heathrow and then take the tube into Central London for the presentation. I seem to remember that none of us had ever flown before so this was amazing for us. The actual time spent in the air was about 45 minutes to get from Newcastle to Heathrow.
The tube system was terrible and it took us longer to get from Heathrow to central London than it did to travel down from Newcastle. Nevertheless, it was still a major improvement for us in comparison to making the journey by road when it would have taken us about 6 hours each way.
