Three of the original members, Bob Theobald, Jim Hollingworth and Alan Forbes were originally members of the Vortex Five.

"This band was well established before I joined them, and a good band they were.

Jimmy was a very good guitarist & Duncan a great bass player with a style of his own. Alan was at that time way ahead of any drummer around and always did a great drum solo.

Litte bit of irony here, Alan replaced Mike Foord in "The Harbour Lights" some years later when Mike left to pursue his career.

Bob was a good singer and a nice guy but we did'nt see eye to eye, he used to always tell me I was nicking his harmony's - probably true. 

The last gig I did with them was at the Royal Oak Alderly Edge. That was the night I fell out with the manager Nick Ireland.

The gig was a disaster. There had been no advertising that the band was appearing there so no-one turned up. The band shares no blame what so ever for what happend that night but the upshot was I left.

Two weeks later I was back at the same gig with a friend of mine - just the two of us. I thought it only fair to the landlady, Ruth Eccersall that we try and put things right. It was well advertised and it went down a bomb.  That was the start of the "HARBOUR LIGHTS"

Brian Higham

It was great to see some old pictures of my first really good group and the story from Brian Higham.

I remember meeting Duncan Clubb on his final gig with the group at Cheadle Womens' Institute - yes, they did have us knitting and making jam on the night!

I feel that Brian got the name Alan Gregory wrong, however, as I came in straight after Duncan left to go on to his studies and the sweet face in the photo surely looks like mine!  (*its been changed Alan, apologies)

My second gig with the group was at the Cavern in Liverpool and I had to pick up some parts for my bass from Paul Young's house in Wythenshawe where we both lived.  Paul had them chrome plated at his works: he later went pro and achieved great things with Sad Cafe.   

Alan Jackson

Unless I'm very much mistaken Jim Hollingworth used to work for the C.W.S. in Balloon Street in the early sixties as I myself did.

A gang of us used to attend St. Johns College opposite Granada Studios on a day release scheme from work.

Jim sometimes brought his guitar with him and used to do a bit of pickin' at break time. I would accompany him on percussion by tapping out a rhythm on the desk top.

Although I never saw him perform on stage I believe the band were pretty good. I even wrote a couple of songs for him but I don't know if he used them in his set. I doubt it.

Happy memories.

Tony Dixon

Jim, Brian, Bob and Duncan

Featuring the group warhorse of the time 'The Vox Reslo Ribbon Microphone'. The 'Ribbon' was a thin strip of something like kitchen foil about 1/8 of an inch wide with a series  'zig zags' folded in the middle. If you blew into the mic. as in "Phe... testing testing one two three" you eventually 'blew' the zig zags out of the foil and the mic lost all its tonal quality and had to br re-ribboned.

These are two shots of the group playing at Cheadle Hulme Parish Hall with a 'stand-in' drummer for Alan.

think he was called Pete.  Shot 1 (above) early and room to move, shot 2 (below) later the same evening busy and hot, jackets off.

Pictured right: This was the groups first business card with our first managers name on it, Alan Webster. Alan was unanimously chosen to be our manager because of his two outstanding managerial attributes :- a 5 cwt. van and a telephone. All joking aside - he was a great bloke.