Chart-topping pop group Wham!, based in Bushey, claim their latest single Wham Rap was banned by the BBC when it was first released last year.

Andy Ridgeley, 19, who was a student at Cassio College before going full time into the music business, said: “They banned it because the song makes out that unemployment is a good thing and ridicules those who work. We did it entirely tongue in cheek.”

A BBC press spokesman said: “We don’t ban records unless they refer strongly to sex or drugs. We receive hundreds of records every week and not all of them make it on to our play lists.”

[From the Watford Observer of February 4, 1983]

 

Startled passengers at Watford Junction narrowly escaped injury this week when a huge slab of tiling smashed to the floor from the subway wall.

Now they are calling for urgent repairs to the station beforer someone is seriously hurt.

One man who came close to being struck by the tiles has criticised British Rail for running a dangerous station.

Simon Little, 20, from Chesham, was standing at the entrance to the subway connecting the platforms on Sunday when he heard a “terrific noise”. New white tiles behind him on the wall had cracked off and fallen to the ground.
He said it was just luck that he and his girlfriend were not hurt.

“Suddenly I was standing in a pile of rubble,” he said. “A sheet of tiling bigger than a square yard just dropped off the wall. Some of it was above head height. A piece of tile hit me but luckily I wasn’t hurt.

“It’s just fortunate it didn’t hit a child. It made one heck of a noise... but none of the staff came to see what happened.”

A train rumbled overhead before the tiling cracked off and Mr Little thinks the vibrations could have caused the accident.

“If a bit of the station falls off every time a train goes past, they’ve got big problems,” he said.

[From the Watford Observer of February 6, 1987]

 

On Monday evening at the Conservative Club, before a densely crowded and representative audience, Mr Charles E. Girardot, of Hunton Bridge, gave an entertainment with Edison’s phonograph. After a short description of the construction of the “talking machine”, illustrated by means of a large diagram, the lecturer proceeded to reproduce a number of vocal and instrumental items and a  greetimg to the meeting by Mr T.F. Halsey, spoken into the phonograph last Friday in London.

[From the Watford Observer of February 14, 1891]

 

An exploding compressor tank blasted a hole in the floor, and a 10ft hole in the roof, of a workshop at Watford Refrigeration and Electrical Equipment Ltd at Merton Road, Watford, on Wednesday afternoon.

No person was injured. Dust from the explosion attracted the attention of firemen in a tender which was passing by at the time. It is believed the explosion arose from a faulty pressure control in the tank.

[From the Watford Observer of February 8, 1952]