THERE is an oft-quoted fallacy that if you remember the 1960s, you weren’t really there.

Try telling that to the recycled teenagers who danced in the aisles of the Queen’s Hall in Hexham on Thursday for the latest show by those wizened wonders of Whitley Bay, the Counterfeit Sixties.

The hips that once gyrated to the Hippy Hippy Shake may have been surgically replaced at Hexham General in many cases, along with those deliciously- dimpled knees twinkling below the briefest of mini skirts, and Beatle cuts may have given way to shiny pates, but there was nothing wrong with the collective memories of those attending the event in aid of the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

Each 60s classic belted out by the four strong group – I refuse to call them a band because of the total absence of a euphonium, and the fact they did not march – had full vocal accompaniment from the audience, who knew every word of every song, including Gilly gilly ossenfeffer katzenellen bogen by the Sea.

“I bet no-one will be singing today’s music in 50 years’ time” beamed a lady in an adjacent seat, who was relieved that her pending knee replacement had not interfered with the performance. “We’re so lucky that we were around when all this was happening.”

The 60s era was a wonderful time to be a teenager, when chart-topping groups would still appear at village halls and intimate venues despite their national and international success.

Everyone of a certain age in the North Tyne remembers that Newcastle group The Animals performed at Bellingham Town Hall in 1964, where they gave their first public performance of a number they were trying out called The House of the Rising Sun.

And going back to my own youth, I recall my all-boys grammar school at Macclesfield in Cheshire used to stage an annual dance, with the express purpose of luring pupils from the all girls high school onto the premises.

Again in 1964, the organisers had booked an unknown group from Blackburn almost a year earlier to perform at the dance – they were called the Four Pennies and on the very night of the dance, their single Juliet reached number one in the charts.

To my chagrin, I was too young to go to the dance, although with hindsight the fact that I could not dance a single step may have proved something of a handicap. While other dances were coming to the fore elsewhere in the country, Macclesfield was trapped in a terpsichorean timewarp.

The twist was regarded as a dangerous innovation, and the jive was the only dance in town, performed by drape jacketed, bootlace tied and beetle crushered teddy boys, who often danced expertly with a beehived girl on either hand, with a Woodbine dangling nonchalantly from the lip.

Gradually though, the Teds and their lime green fluorescent socks drifted into the history books even in Macclesfield, to be replaced in the main by rockers in their studded leather jackets. I sported a leather jacket long before I owned my first motor bike, purchased from the local branch of the Army and Navy Stores for a fiver. It was bible black and I thought I looked the coolest dude in town.

Sadly though, I once wore it over my brand new school rugby jersey. For years, we had played in plain royal blue, but this was white with a red hoop around the chest, and it even had a number on the back.

I thought I looked like a cross between Marlon Brando and Billy Boston as I promenaded round the town centre and did not care a jot when it started to rain heavily.

It was only when I got home that I realised my leather jacket was not only not waterproof, but not colourfast either, and all the black dye had soaked into the shoulders of my new rugby shirt.

These were the days long before tumble driers or even a washing machine in our house, so the shirt had to be hastily soaked in Omo, battered with the posser and put through the mangle, before being put on the clothes horse in front of the fire overnight.