Diary of a Teddy Boy By Mim Scala published by Headline Review £9.99
extracts from the critics choice review
by VAL HENNESSY, Daily Mail,femail.co.uk - 23rd February 2001

Mythology has it that those who remember the Sixties can't have been there. But there's an exception to every rule and Mim Scala is that exception.
His book is an in-yer-face celebration of all that was excessive, anarchic, socially disruptive, and wildly exciting about the fabled youthquake that began in the 1950s.
Mim was there, everywhere, getting his rocks off (as they used to say), sweaty finger on the pulse of swinging London, rubbing shoulders with a glittering galaxy of Sixties icons and villains - Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, The Beatles, the Kray Twins, Terence Stamp, Jean-Luc Godard, Cat Stevens, Jacqueline Bisset...
You name them, Mim was partying with them in his crushed velvet loon pants and frilly purple shirts, at the clubs, coffee bars, jive cellars and jazz joints.
And speaking of joints, despite Mim's copious abuse of a vast assortment of mind-blowing substances, his memory, studded with big names and seared with psychedelic nostalgia, is in astonishingly good shape.
Born in London into an Italian immigrant family (famous for ice-cream), the teenage Mim was to experience his pivotal moment when, wearing his Teddy Boy suit and crepe-soled brothel-creepers, he attended a showing of the Fifties movie Blackboard Jungle.
What happened next, as he explains, changed his life: 'The overpowering and unforgettable sound of rock 'n' roll hit me between the ears... Bill Haley and his Comets had indelibly stamped my soul.'
Despite the cinema erupting into chaos, seats and screen being razor-slashed by rival gangs, Mim - like thousands of pent-up urban baby-boomers across post-war Britain - was suddenly on the road to social revolution.

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©2001 Associated New Media