So there I was, staggering my way around the back streets of Waterloo Station on Saturday night, slightly the worse for drink, when a shadow appeared from Gasoline Alley. Thinking I was about to be mugged I prepared myself for the worst, as a voice asked “are you one of them?”
“One of who,” I replied.
“A Smiler,” said the shady looking character in an old raincoat that had clearly never let him down.
I paused and answered in the positive. “Follow me,” he said, as I was beckoned down the alley and through a back door into a dark seedy room with worn carpets and the kind of mis-matched seating usually found in mini cab waiting rooms.
“It’s the Holy Grail,” he muttered as he shuffled off to the back of the room and switched on an ancient huge reel to reel projector.
It was then I noticed I wasn’t alone. Smiler’s very own Yve and Andy were there along with several other Smiler members. All popped up to greet me, rather like that cinema scene from An American Werewolf In London. I sat myself down on the tatty sofa, was handed a can of cheap cider and wondered what the hell was going on. Yve whispered – “It’s Rod The Mod. He’s got Rod The Mod!” This couldn’t be true, could it? I pinched myself. I wasn’t dreaming.
Rod The Mod is a 30-minute documentary from 1965. It was thought lost forever until 2013 when a BBC researcher discovered it misfiled and in several sections at the BFI. It is, indeed, the Holy Grail. ….Go to SMILER Retro to read the full blog and John’s experience, watching this documentary in 2017 in its entirety
