Friday nights at the Marquee were just amazing! When you walked in, there would be this bank of fog from people smoking and it was packed to the rafters. It couldn’t happen now, because obviously, smoking would be banned and you wouldn’t be able to get the amount of people into a club like that. But to be honest, I never remember there being any trouble there.

After that session finished, you’d go to the Flamingo, which at the weekend was open until six in the morning. They were great sessions, especially with Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames. In the summer of ‘64, the Beatles were going to the Far East and Australia, but Ringo Starr had become very ill and was unable to play, so they wanted a drummer. After lots of discussion and auditioning, they decided to go for this guy called Jimmy Nicol, who was the drummer with Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, so I had to organise a big press reception at EMI because of the reflected glory on Georgie Fame. That was a great coup for the band and because of that, they became really well-known.

We also had Georgie Fame’s 21st birthday party, which took place at his manager Rik Gunnell’s office. Chris Farlowe was there and I remember meeting Georgie Fame’s uncle. Georgie’s real name is Clive Powell and he comes from Leigh in Lancashire. His uncle was a retired miner and he was telling me how much money he used to get for going down the mines and how much Clive was getting for playing, as he called it, ‘this music’, which he obviously didn’t think very much of!

Another P.R. stunt I was involved in was when Screaming Lord Sutch launched his own pirate radio station, Radio Sutch, on the banks of the Thames. The idea was to have this radio station on a fort in the Thames; it did happen and later became Radio City. Sutch turned up in his late Fifties/early Sixties’ American car with fins and then the photographers took pictures of his group the Savages on a small tug. One of the members of the Savages was a guy called Paul Nicolas who became the very well-known TV actor.

So I was involved in lots of interesting situations. They were great times. Barriers were breaking down and people were doing things that had never been done before. It was all so new, and it had an innocence to it as well.

Visit photographer Jeremy Fletcher’s website at http://www.users.bigpond.com/jeremyfletcher/ to see images of some of Greg Tesser’s publicity stunts.

Are there any outrageous band publicity stunts that you remember from the Sixties? Share your memories here!