Leonard Bentley
Piccadilly Circus: 1976
This is a Kardorama postcard printed in Ireland showing a bird’s eye view of Piccadilly Circus with Coventry Street straight ahead and Shaftesbury Avenue on the left. You can almost feel the heat coming from this image because this is the summer of 1976, the hottest and sunniest on record. Again, the London Pavilion should be the clue to the exact date but according to The Times newspaper cinema listings for June, July and August, the film “DEATH RACE 2000” was not shown at the London Pavilion. It was shown however at Scene 3 in the Swiss Centre complex just along the road in Leicester Square from 31st July until 31st August 1976. It may be that the Pavilion was advertising for Scene 3, but I am not totally convinced. It was a Roger Corman production, directed by Paul Bartel and starred David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone. Although criticised at the time, it is now regarded as a cult dystopian science fiction great. Unusually there are two advertising signs from the building sector on the corner, at the top where Rum and Bile Beans had been advertised before, there is an advertisement for “ESAB. Weld OK. OK Weld”. The company, Elektriska Svetsnings – Aktiebolaget, is a Swedish company making welding consumables and, in their advertisement, used the initials of the inventor of manual metal arc welding electrodes, Oscar Kjellberg. Lower down is an advertisement for Silexine Paints, it is a private Limited Company and is now called Silexine Coatings. Coincidentally there was a product called Silexine produced in the mid-19th Century which was designed to clean paint. Silex is the Latin word for rock and has become to mean powdered silicates used in the production of paint. The company approached London Transport in 1969 with a proposal to paint a London Bus acting as a mobile billboard advertising the company, London Transport agreed to this and it was the first of many buses painted in this way advertising other companies.
Piccadilly Circus: 1976
This is a Kardorama postcard printed in Ireland showing a bird’s eye view of Piccadilly Circus with Coventry Street straight ahead and Shaftesbury Avenue on the left. You can almost feel the heat coming from this image because this is the summer of 1976, the hottest and sunniest on record. Again, the London Pavilion should be the clue to the exact date but according to The Times newspaper cinema listings for June, July and August, the film “DEATH RACE 2000” was not shown at the London Pavilion. It was shown however at Scene 3 in the Swiss Centre complex just along the road in Leicester Square from 31st July until 31st August 1976. It may be that the Pavilion was advertising for Scene 3, but I am not totally convinced. It was a Roger Corman production, directed by Paul Bartel and starred David Carradine and Sylvester Stallone. Although criticised at the time, it is now regarded as a cult dystopian science fiction great. Unusually there are two advertising signs from the building sector on the corner, at the top where Rum and Bile Beans had been advertised before, there is an advertisement for “ESAB. Weld OK. OK Weld”. The company, Elektriska Svetsnings – Aktiebolaget, is a Swedish company making welding consumables and, in their advertisement, used the initials of the inventor of manual metal arc welding electrodes, Oscar Kjellberg. Lower down is an advertisement for Silexine Paints, it is a private Limited Company and is now called Silexine Coatings. Coincidentally there was a product called Silexine produced in the mid-19th Century which was designed to clean paint. Silex is the Latin word for rock and has become to mean powdered silicates used in the production of paint. The company approached London Transport in 1969 with a proposal to paint a London Bus acting as a mobile billboard advertising the company, London Transport agreed to this and it was the first of many buses painted in this way advertising other companies.