Active8 issue 206 April 2020

ACTIVE8
And the winner is....
Before pubs and clubs discovered karaoke,
stand-up nights and tribute acts, a sure-fire
way to fill their premises was to stage a
beauty contest. An S8 engineering company
also got in on the act. Mike Firth explains
W
ORKINGMEN’S clubs had them, pubs loved them,
businesses ran them and newspapers couldn’t get
enough of them. No carnival was quite complete without one
and the grandest all were screened on prime-time TV,
attracting more viewers than the World Cup!
I’m talking about beauty contests and you probably remember the
small competitions in your locality just as much as the huge Miss
World showpieces run by Eric Morley.
While as many as 27.5 million Britons sat unblinking in front of
their black and white screens to see who George Best would be
dating next, on the local scene, pubs and clubs saw beauty
pageants as a quick way of filling their premises and boosting
takings.
At this stage, I must make a confession: I was a beauty contest
judge, not once, but twice. The first time was over in Rotherham
where the local 'Advertiser' newspaper’s annual search for a
‘stunner’ attracted hundreds of entries.
So many local lasses entered each year that heats were staged at
four local clubs, followed by a grand final at Tiffany’s. The crowning
was usually carried out by a major celebrity. Or sometimes Radio
Sheffield’s Tony Capstick.
Over in Chesterfield, I had the dubious honour of being on the
judging panel for a Miss Whittington Moor event. Hundreds of folk
were crammed into a pub lounge to spectate, with a dozen-or-so
bikini-clad ladies waiting to be called through in turn from the tap
room.
Contestant No. 19 quickly deduced that
something had gone wrong, so she jumped in
a taxi, disappeared back home to Bolsover
and was soon on the phone to ‘The Sun’
They rather put the pub’s pool players off their game. With no
connecting door, the contestants had to leave the premises, walk
around the perimeter of the freezing cold car park and then parade
in through the main door of the lounge. A growing band of
disbelieving men at the bus stop across the road appeared oblivious
to all the double-deckers passing by.
I seem to remember a close relation of the organiser won that
particular contest, but there was an even bigger controversy at the
crowning of another Chesterfield beauty queen... or rather someone
who wasn’t the queen.
Organised by the ‘Derbyshire Times’ and staged at the old
Aquarius club, the Miss Chesterfield contest was particularly
prestigious as the winner went through to represent the town in the
Miss England event (Or was it Miss UK... or perhaps Miss Great
Britain?).
All was going well and the excitement mounted as the late-night
show reached its climax. The runners-up were announced and the
audience held its breath as yet another Radio Sheffield
“personality”, Peter Crabtree, stole the limelight.
“The winner is...” he announced. “And the new Miss Chesterfield...”
he continued. “Number... nine... teen!”
Somewhat unfortunately, his announcement was so drawn out
that in between him saying “nine” and “teen”, a young lady wearing
No. 9 stepped onto the stage, accepted a crown, received a bouquet
of flowers and had a couple of pictures taken sitting on the throne.
Miss Laycock
1953, Pat Ward
Hazel Petty was Miss
Laycock in 1972
1974’s winner,
Jackie Palmer
Karen Crookes was
successful in 1973
Contestant No. 19, who clearly had brains to match her beauty,
quickly deduced that something had gone wrong, so she jumped in
a taxi, disappeared back home to Bolsover and was soon on the
phone to ‘The Sun’ which delighted in reporting how organisers of a
beauty contest had contrived to crown the wrong girl.
I’m certain there were never any such mishaps whenever one
particular S8 factory, Laycock, hosted their big night of the year.
Active8 was presented with a collection of old company magazines
which feature more glamour than you might expect to find in an
engineering firm’s newsletter.
The Archer Road factory’s Miss Laycock contest offered wonderful
prizes including folding umbrellas, toilet holdalls and travelling
clocks, so it is perhaps easy to see why so many female employees
decided to don their mini-skirts and hot-pants and parade around
the Social Club in front of a local GP and the company personnel
manager.
The first “pin-up” from the Archer Road factory was crowned in
1953. Pat Ward worked in the comptometer section of the wages
department and her prize was ten bob, plus the honour of featuring
on the front page of ‘Laycock’s Magazine’.
In the 1970s, employees not only took part in their own “Miss
Laycock Safety Queen” contest, they also competed for the much
lengthier “Miss Guest, Keen and Nettlefolds Transmissions” title
(You should have seen the size of the sash!).
Active8 hopes that any of the lovely ex-Laycock ladies who spot
themselves in these pictures will, once they have picked
themselves up from the floor, get in touch to tell us what it was like
being a 1970s beauty queen.
We really want to know if you still own your folding umbrella and
travel clock.
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