WHEN American singer Jack Jones pulled out of the Wraysbury donkey derby 46 years ago, his replacement rider, actor Susan George promptly won the race.

Over 2,000 spectators crammed alongside the racetrack as the film star expertly rode her steed towards the finish line, she didn’t have to call on any acting skills to beam at the Observer camera, whilst wearing her giant rosette.

A Britwell mechanic had a narrow escape in 1973, when the car he was working on suddenly burst into flames at his repair business in Cippenham.

Charles Brace was repairing a 1964 Vauxhall Viva, with a nearly full petrol tank, which was parked near to two large bottles of acetylene and oxygen gas.

A shaken Mr Brace later told the Observer: “I don’t know how it happened, it just suddenly went up in flames and I ran like hell, if the bottles had gone up the place would have been blown sky high.”

Two ambitious business entrepreneurs formed an unlikely trans-Atlantic partnership to make their Slough Trading Estate firm an international success.

Roy Holford and Andy Hart launched Advanced Air (UK) Ltd. to manufacture diffusion grills for heating and ventilation contractors in North America and the middle east.

If this wasn’t enough for the pair Mr. Holford was also boss of Royair Ltd., employing over 40 staff in Stirling Road, Slough, and taking regular flight to Saudi Arabia to check on the company’s recent installations.

The Slough-based Salle Porter Fencing Club were ‘foiled’ by the opposition at the County Fencing Union’s annual foil rally in 1973.

The squad, Edith Bucknell, Paul Rennie and Jacky Birdseye competed against six other teams from Berks, Bucks, and Oxon to come sixth at Slough Community Centre, which was won by Wellsbourne from High Wycombe.

A record number of visitors visited Glaxo’s summer fete at their Sefton Park ground, Stoke Poges, with organisers hailing the event as the best in the 12 years that the firm had put on the attraction.

A showbiz seven-a-side football team called the Entertainers XI included Hugh Elton, David Janson, Michael Redfern and John Wade competed against two Glaxo teams, without scoring a single goal.

The fete also included a debut performance by the 5th Cippenham Army Cadet Force motorcycle team, who had used sponsorship money from their recent activities to purchase their bikes.

Members of a rather exclusive motor club were due to travel to the Alps of Austria and Germany 46 years ago.

The Rolls Royce Enthusiasts Club was marking the 60th anniversary of a similar journey made by three cars in the very early days of ‘Rollers’.

Amongst the owners were Jack Smallman from Taplow and Brian Bilton-Sanderson of Burnham who owned a 1957 Silver Shadow and 1949 Silver Cloud.