In the music paper end-of year polls, Melody Maker had readers voting for their favourite Radio Show, but NME and Record Mirror wanted votes for readers' favourite TV or Radio Show. This somewhat broad category saw Top of the Pops and Ready, Steady, Go! battling it out against the likes of the Big L Fab Forty and Radio City's Auntie Mabel Hour! The Record Mirror poll voted the Fab Forty eighth, one place above the Kenny Everett Show. Interestingly, the Caroline US Top 100 (which came 12th) was more popular than their UK chart, the Caroline Hot 100, by a massive three votes! The NME poll placed the Fab Forty sixth, while Melody Maker readers placed it eighth.

Field's Festive Fab 'Forty' for Sunday 18/12/66

'Twas the week before Christmas and the Fab was getting fat – having expanded to the Fab Forty-Eight!

– 40 Baby Tomorrow Paul Jones Despite being a Fab Forty entry, Baby Tomorrow did not get the chance to enter the national charts, as Paul Jones's record label dropped any plans they had to issue it as a UK single. (It was released as a single in the USA.) Mary was able to console Paul over missing out on national chart success when she met him thirty-three years later.

Fontana issued this single by the man who shared his record label's name. The former Glyn Geoffrey Ellis did not take his stage name from the label, however, but chose it in honour of Elvis's drummer, D J Fontana. Pamela Pamela became Wayne's biggest solo hit in the nationals, missing the Top Ten by just one place.

At a date and venue not mentioned in the Knees Club Book, but thought to be around June, the club gained members Wayne Fontana (#283), his then girlfriend Sue Davis (#285), whom he married shortly afterwards, plus Jay Dennison (#284) and Stuart Sirett (#297) of his then backing group The Opposition.

30 32 When I See My Baby Studio Six Polydor 56131 Clive Mc Clure saw the single in the Fab 40 and wrote: I'm Clive McClure, brother of Colin McClure – both of us used to play in the Scottish Band Studio Six. I played rhythm guitar in the group, and played on all of our records. Your Radio Scotland Page, which has a picture of Studio Six from the Dec '66 issue of Showbeat Monthly, has a picture on the cover showing my brother Colin at the front and I am at the extreme right of the picture looking a bit like Manfred Mann! By the way my brother, myself and Neil Grimshaw (Lead guitar), pictured between us, are now all scattered around the London area. Thanks to Clive's information, we now know that the line-up of Studio Six was Colin McClure (vocals), Clive McClure (rhythm guitar), Neil Grimshaw (lead), Gerry Tedeschi (bass), Ricky Kerr (organ) and Ron Milne (drums). There is now a full feature about Studio Six, who spent a number of weeks in the Fab 40, in our Radio Scotland section. The band shared an agent with the Who and the Bee Gees, played support to the Stax tour line-upwhen it played Glasgow and turned down two Gibb Brother songs in favour of a ditty penned by lead guitarist, Neil! Girl trio The Karlins, whose single It's Good To Be Around is featured in the 1966 Big L Family Forty, the chart compiled specially for the festive season, grace the January '67 cover of 242 Showbeat Monthly

Cher's smallest US Sixties hit had scraped into the Hot Hundred at #97 for just one week in November. She was to repeat this with a one-week stint in the Fab Forty. The Graham Gouldman song had already been a Big L climber in April of 66, when it was released by fellow-Mancunians, St Louis Union (Decca F12386). A somewhat melancholy song, Behind the Door was perhaps not best suited to be a Christmas release and failed to make any impact nationally.

Besides climbers that were played at the time of the broadcast of the Sunday Fab Forty, Alan kept a note of others he heard later in the week and incorporated them into his list. With fewer new releases during the Christmas and New Year period, the climber list contained no DJ picks this week.

Originally called The Rhondells, Cyrkle were college friends who started out playing covers of Beatles songs in New Jersey and ended up being managed by Brian Epstein. John Lennon is reputed to have suggested the name-change. In the summer of '66, Tom Dawes (gtr, sitar, harmonica, vcls), Marty Fried aka Troy Honda (perc, drms), Earl Pickens (keyb'ds) and Don Dannemann aka The Sheet Metal Prince, found themselves in the unenviable position of being opening act for the Beatles on their USA tour. Cyrkle had two summery-flavoured Top Twenty hits, Red Rubber Ball (#2) and Turn Down Day (#16). Please Don't Ever Leave Me was their third Hot Hundred entry, but it only nudged into the chart at #59. The single also failed to make the Fab Forty.

Dawes and Dannemann have since become successful ad-men, penning jingles for commercial airlines, fizzy drinks and equally-fizzy stomach remedies.