KBGS Old Boys' Forum

A place to discuss Keighley Boys' Grammar School. 


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KBGS Old Boys' Forum
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OK - it's gone quiet again. Tell me the fashionable clothes/shoes/haircuts you sported to achieve the heights of coolth when you were at KGBS! If your mammy couldn't afford clothes, how did you modify the school uniform to achieve cred?

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Allan. I don't know if this entry merits a reply. Seriously what is "coolth" and as for "cred" well I think both are a bit "naff" to quote a royal. When a lot of us were at school we were of the era when a decent uniform had to be looked after and we were , generally speaking , proud to belong to the school. We also had nothing else to wear as the clothes were rationed severely. Even so I can cheerfully say it never occurred to any of us to do any of what you suggest. I know you will reply "get a life" but that's how I feel about it. I guess you later lads had been got at by TV advertising ,which thankfully we were free of and from which we remain immune.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 43-46

Current location (optional) Tasmania

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MN - what a load of tosh!
I take it you believe that only TV advertising is effective. You're probably not as immune to it as you think - try reading Hidden Persuaders, written by Vance Packard in 1957.
I'll beat AJ to it - get a life!!

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It was practically impossible to wear "fashionable" clothes at kbgs. It was possible to wear trousers that were close to "drainpipe" without being pulled up about it, but I never knew where the lads who did this bought the trousers. The only modification I recall that was widespread was the fringed tie. Remove the tie. Hold it by the narrow end and crack it like a whip. I don't recall any of us being pulled up over the fringed tie. Maybe they just thought the manufacturing quality had declined.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-65

Current location (optional) Leeds

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You got credibility from what you did, not what you were wearing,a much better measure of worth in my view

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 41/46

Current location (optional) I.O.M

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Come on lads get a grip Alan was only trying to get a new thead going but as usual we have to get into an "Us and Them" argument. We're all KBGS old boys and it doesn't matter from which era, so let's take a new thread on its face value, and stop trying to score Brownie points.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1959-64

Current location (optional) Keighley

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Hey - and it worked! Getting a new discussion going, that is...I honestly don't mind the dissing posts (dissing!!!!???? - can't use words like that surely?), but keeping a sense of humour,as well as of perspective, isn't a bad thing. For example, my own attempts at dressing cool involved a beatle jacket made of some foam backed material. It rained. With my already considerable body weight, I weighed an additional ton, and had difficulty getting the length of the bus station clock to make my fashion statement to the world. By modifying the school uniform - what I had in mind (and Trevor, I seem to remember you were a star at this), were things like wearing the open necked collar - allowed in summer- on the inside of the blazer rather than the outside; pointy and chisel-toed shoes (so what if they did turn up at the ends after a kick-around?) and, woebetide if you got caught, wearing your shirt-bottom outside your trousers (still a firm favourite with the 14-18 year olds at the school near our street). I don't remember the tie trick, Shaun - but I'm going to try it before I go to the office tomorrow!

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A pleasure to read your posting Allan. Up until now I had thought that I was the only one daft enough to have bought one of those foam Beatle jackets.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-65

Current location (optional) Leeds

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I wasn't smart enough to realize the importance of looking cool when I was at KBGS. "Importance?" you question? Let me tell you all, it was as important then to look "cool" as it is now. Why? Because that's what women go for. I looked so very "nice" and "conventional" that the girls at the Central Youth Club stayed away from me in droves, and crawled all over the clowns who had inch thick crepe soles and drainpipe jeans. Things began to look up a bit when I bought some drainpipes of my own. My dad wouldn't let me wear anything like that "You're not going to wear bloody things like that while you're living at our house!"........I bought them in secret and changed in and out of them in the allotments. They were black, with green stitching.....Crazy, man!... You've got to do what you've got to do to get a leg over........... I was divorced during the disco years, and as much as I hated,(with a passion, disco, I dressed the part and did it, because that's where the hot chicks were. (I wasn't looking for intellectual stimulation you understand). You don't dress "cool" to impress guys, you do it to get laid.
Man, if I could go back to the Central Youth Club with what I know now, that brown eyed strawberry blonde with the shapely ankles wouldn't know what hit her!

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 52-57

Current location (optional) USA

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I couldn't afford to look cool, my uniform was the best suit of clothes I owned at the time apart from a pair of jeans and a cool blue shirt. The coolest thing I ever did was to shorten the strap on my satchell as far as I could so that it was like an oversized handbag and then struggled to get my arm through to carry it on my shoulder.

When I was in the army as a young soldier we always tried to make out baggy green uniforms, especially the floppy hats well loved by Aussie Diggers, a lot more individualised. Not an easy task when by virtue of its name, it should be uniform. I came very close to having almost drainpipe uniform trousers.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 58-61

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I never thought much about spruce togs - but I did become attracted to crepe soles - and being in the front rows of assembly I was much impressed by Ben Tren's crepes which appeared at about nose level. This was around the teddy boy era. To call a lad a "ted" was either insult or compliment depending on how it was received.A close look at the "panorama" pics of 1954 will reveal the extent that kbgs lads followed the teddy boy hair styles and ties. There were Ted Wars between Keighley and Bradford Teds and once Rock and Roll was given publicity through the Bill Haley film,kbgs lads fell into vogue. Allegedly, Prut asked a rather rotund 4th year BC Smith, "Do you rock and roll, Smith?". The drains and the DA hairstyles crept in and it always seemed to be the lads from out of town who were the trend setters. There was a Buddy Holly period when it was stylish to have similar specs. I was more into Jazz and its more modern strains - so "cool" was the watchword. This was more a description of the musical style and I had great difficulty putting this concept over to Sam Riley in one of those dreadful form period "talks" after seeing Ella, Dizzy, Getz, Hawkins, Eldridge and many more in concert in Leeds. The "coolest" dressers in the pop music field were the later arrivals on the "rock" scene - Marty Wilde, Jim Dale, Terry Dene etc -even Cliff. The cut of their jib was more "Italian" and I was drawn to wide shirt collars, self-coloured woven ties with a windsor knot and jackets which were cut sparingly. I wanted the hairstyle - so I got my barber to give me a respectable short back and sides - with my quiff cut off at the forehead. How I wish I had it back.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 52-60

Current location (optional) Lincoln

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Does anyone remember a time, probably about 1964/65 whe ex US army combat jackets were de rigeur?
I had one, miles too big, but thought I looked the bees knees in it.

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Yes. I remember the GI jackets. There was an ex army shop towards the bottom of Low Street (probably where a road now is) that used to sell them, along with another two popular items, the blue donkey jacket and the light brown leather sleeveless thingy that bin men (amongst others) used to wear. All of this stuff represented a departure from the 'smart' gear of the very early sixties (white shorty raincoat; suits; Italian bum warmer jackets; dog tooth check topcoats) and headed in a very different direction...

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Not just American military jackets were in fashion but some silly bugger thought driving a US army vehicle was cool. And I have seen that same person at the Keighley Blues Club. Big ears and all. Not ex-KBGS of course.

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...and i was at the Keighley Beer Festival this afternoon with that very man. Ex Ermysteds and ex BBC. That's his excuse anyway.