Frankie Vaughan Ate My Hamster: Growing Up in the East End

by Rikki Brown

Moving into a new home in Easterhouse in 1961 was the start of some great adventures for Rikki Brown. For a young boy, it was hard to tell what to worry about more - the threat of nuclear war or starting primary school! Certainly each offered its own horrors. But after surviving Scarlett Fever, primaries were a whirl of games and lessons and comic misunderstandings. Then came secondary school, full of intellectual segregation, status struggles and belt-happy teachers. But with the sounds of the seventies now raging, all you needed was the right LP under your arm to attract admiration. Secondary school also brought new forays into sports, pubs, clothes, and the opposite sex, not to mention surviving the prevalent Easterhouse gangs. This hilarious account by newspaper columnist Rikki Brown will take readers on an entertaining and riotous trip down memory lane, back to the days when getting through school was a matter of survival - where only a combination of brains, style and street sense could guarantee success.

192 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2011