FOR a time in the 1950s he was an English motor racing superstar, inconsistent, maybe, but a worthy champion nontheless.
The racing career of Mike Hawthorn ended immediately when he became World Champion and announced his retirement from Forumla 1.
But still he dogged the headlines, but only for a short time. Within months of taking the title Mike Hawthorn was dead.
*John Michael Hawthorn was born in Mexborough, Yorkshire on April 10, 1929.
*As a racing driver he was in the same British elite group that included Stirling Moss and his great friend Peter Collins, who would die in the 1958 German Grand Prix. Hawthorn went on to become Britain’s first World Champion.
* He was a flambuoyant character who wore a bow tie and a broad smile – even when driving.
*Educated at public school, Hawthorn started to take an interest in racing when he was nine years old – his father owned a garage near the Brooklands race track. His racing career really got under way in 1950. By 1953 he was driving for Ferrari.
*His first full Formula 1 season was in 1953, but success eluded him – he had only one championship victory. It came in the French Grand Prix at Reims when he crossed the line a fraction of a second in front of Argentininian ace Fangio
*Bad publicity surrounded him when it was claimed he had avoided National Service. The reason he did not serve later came to light – a kidney ailment rendered him ineligible.
*Hawthorn left Ferrari to drive for Vanwall and BRM teams. In 1955 he was competing in the Le Mans 24 Hour Race when one car crashed killing over 80 people.
*Mike Hawthorn was winner of the 1958 Formula One Championship. After winning the title, Hawthorn immediately announced his retirement from Formula One.
*The same year he became champion Hawthorn saw his great friend Peter Collins killed at Nurburgring in Germany
*Mike Hawthorn was engaged to well known fashion model Jean Howarth.
*He died on January 22, 1959, near his home in Farnham when his Jaguar skidded off a wet corner. He was 29 years old.
*In his career Mike Hawthorn started 47 races, had 17 podium finishes and six fastest laps. His last Grand Prix was in Morocco.

For many years these two women were among the best loved entertainers in Britain.
They were Elsie and Doris Waters, better known to millions as Gert and Daisy. And they had an equally famous brother – Jack Warner, much loved as TV’s Dixon of Dock Green, a major hit in the Fifties.
The characters Gert and Daisy were created in 1930 and soon achieved success mainly on radio, but went on to be huge stage stars too, being described by one writer as “ the most successful female double-act in the history of British music hall and variety.”
They would talk about anything and everything, but especially their fictional husbands Bert and Wally.
Gert and Daisy, once described as “perhaps the most influential social satirists of the period,” were regulars on the hugely popular radio show Workers’ Playtime.
Throughout their careers they wrote almost all their own comic songs and sketches.
TV work came late and only after they were seen in a commercial and offered their own show, a sitcom which was named after them and screened in 1959.
In it they played former show business performers who ran a theatrical guest house.
But it was not the success producers had hoped for, the sisters being unaccustomed to performing material written by someone else – Ted Willis, who also wrote the Dixon series.
Only one series of six episodes was made.

She was a British singing superstar, as famous in the 1950s for her extravagant hooped skirts as she was for her voice.
Today, over half a century later, Alma Cogan is still fondly remembered by an army of fans.
Born Alma Angela Cohen in Stepney in May 1932, she was encouraged to go onto the stage by her mother and while still a child auditioned with Ted Heath, the well known bandleader.
This did not lead to anything, however and it was a record company executive who spotted the teenager and realised her potential. For a time she sang for diners at London’s Cumberland Hotel but in 1952 began her recording career with To Be Worthy of You backed by Would You.
Then came the break which would lead to her becoming famous. When Joy Nichols left the radio show Take It From here Alma stepped in as resident singer. In 1954 her recording of Bell Bottom Blue made the hit parade.
Always glamorous she became one of the best known faces on TV, her gowns, often sequined, becoming her trademark.
Billed as “the girl with laughter in her voice” Alma was popular for her up-beat ballads and novelty songs, but also changed her style as music itself changed even including rock and roll in her repertoire.
Even today many of her songs are fondly remembered – among them This Ole House, I Can’t Tell a Waltz From a Tango, Never Do a Tango With an Eskimo and Snakes and Snails and Puppy Dogs’ Tails.
Alma Cogan died of cancer at the age of 34 on October 26, 1966.

January 6 – Elvis Presley appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show for the third and final time. He was only shown from the waist up, even during the gospel segment, singing “Peace In The Valley”.

January 9 – Prime Minister Anthony Eden resigned.

January 10 – Harold Macmillan (left) became Prime Minister.

January 16 – The Cavern Club opened in Liverpool.

February 16 – The “Toddlers’ Truce”, a controversial television closedown between 6 and 7.00 pm, was abolished.

March 25 – The Treaty of Rome established the European Economic Community (EEC).

April 9 – Egypt reopened the Suez Canal to all shipping.

May 15 – Stanley Matthews played his final international game, ending an English record international career of almost 23 years.

August 21 – US President Dwight D. Eisenhower (left) announced a two year suspension of nuclear testing.

September 4 -   The Ford Motor Company introduced the Edsel.

October 2 – David Lean’s film The Bridge on the River Kwai opened in the UK.

October 4 – Space Age – Sputnik program: The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite to orbit the earth.

October 11 – The Jodrell Bank Radio telescope opened in Cheshire.

November 3 –The Soviet Union launched Sputnik 2, with the first animal in space (a dog named Laika) on board.

December 4 – The Lewisham train disaster in the UK left 92 dead.

Born in 1957

January 11 – Bryan Robson, footballer

February 9 – Gordon Strachan, Scottish footballer and manager

March 10 – Osama bin Laden, Saudi-born Islamic extremist

April 9 – Severiano Ballesteros, Spanish golfer

April 25 – Eric Bristow, darts player

May 10 – Sid Vicious, rock bassist (Sex Pistols) (d. 1979)

July 18 – Nick Faldo, golfer

August 22 – Steve Davis, snooker player

They died in 1957

January 14 – Humphrey Bogart, American actor (b. 1899)

May 16 – Eliot Ness, American policeman (b. 1903)

June 1 -  Jimmy Dorsey, American jazz musician (b. 1904)

August 7 – Oliver Hardy, American actor (b. 1892)

October 29 – Louis B. Mayer, American studio mogul and former head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) (b. 1885)

As musicians go he was talented but never brilliant. As for singing he could cope but you’d hardly rate him as anything above average.

To look at he was certainly no Adonis, more a Mr Average, thinning on top and slightly overweight.

For years he eked out an existence with his fellow musicians known as The Saddlemen, playing popular music around the States.

It was all unremarkable stuff, mundane and un-extraordinary.

But then Bill Haley found the winning formula.

It really began in 1953. Shortly before then Haley and The Saddlemen had started using numbers with a rhythm and blues influence as a result of Haley noticing that white teenagers were tending to favour black music.

Such a mixture went down well and The Saddlemen achieved growing popularity.

After a successful first record in 1951 Haley-  born William John Clifton – longed for a second and  two years later made Crazy Man, crazy, the title being taken from a popular catchphrase used by  teenagers. It proved a hit and was later hailed as the first rock and roll record to enter the charts.

But another two years would pass before Bill Haley was to earn himself a place in pop history as the man who led a teenage revolution.

The song which catapulted him to international fame was a number issued on two previous occasions. Rock Around the Clock failed to take off – until it was included in a film called Blackboard Jungle.

Then –suddenly – the song was in demand and not only in America. Teenagers throughout the world flocked to buy it, the disc selling millions of copies. The record became the theme song of rock ‘n’ roll and Bill Haley its founding father.

Haley’s life at the top, though, was to be short lived – only about two years. But that one hit song lived on and on. In Britain alone it entered the charts on no less than eight occasions and even today is still regarded as the rock classic.

And the man himself?

He said of the rock ‘n’ roll movement: “We gave the teenagers something of their own, something that was strictly theirs.”

Following on from Rock Around the Clock Haley had several hits, although none ever attracted such hysteria. These included classics like Shake Rattle and Roll, See You later Alligator, R-O-C-K, Saints Rock ‘n’ Roll and Rip It Up.

Haley played on for many more years after his initial success, but had little else to offer.

As the years passed he faded from the scene, becoming increasingly reclusive and in his later years living in seclusion in Harlington, Texas, refusing interviews or to make a comeback performance.

But for many the memories created by the man they called he father of rock ‘n’ roll were still brought flooding back whenever that first hit record was played.

And the man himself?

He died following a heart attack at the age of 53 on February 9, 1981.