In 1964 it was the moment the children of Holy Cross parish in north Belfast waited for all week: at 3pm on Sunday their school held a disco.
For the price of a few pence they would pack the hall, the music would start and for the next few hours their world was a sublime realm of dance, joy and rock’n’roll, especially when the Hippy Hippy Shake played.
It was an era of innocence in Northern Ireland long vanished – until last week when the BBC unearthed archive footage of one such disco.
The black and white video of children in Ardoyne rocking like there was no tomorrow has gone viral and sparked a search for groovers now old enough to be grandparents.
In the clip they dance to the Hippy Hippy Shake, a 1959 song by Robert Lee “Chan” Romero that the Beatles recorded in 1963. Two young girls in particular have transfixed viewers with vigorous moves that might have caused whiplash in anyone older.
The search for the dancers has so far yielded one, Jackie Meehan, who in the video is a hip-swaying 10-year-old boy in shorts and a black waistcoat.
“This was our big night out even though it was a Sunday afternoon,” Meehan, 68, a former labourer and plasterer who still lives in Ardoyne, told the BBC. A Catholic church service was held before the disco, he said. “Most people didn’t listen to the priest. Everybody was just thinking about the disco … once a week, that’s what they lived for. It was a real outlet. You could really get yourself psyched up.”
Speaking to the Guardian on Monday, Meehan said children in that era endlessly played football, hopscotch and other street games, generating high-octane energy. Meehan, who has four children and nine grandchildren, marvelled at the images of his younger self, and the two girls dancing beside him. “Absolutely superb. They must have practised for hours and hours. You can just see the joy on all the faces.”
The video was filmed in February 1964 for the BBC’s Tonight programme on Northern Ireland’s slow pace of life on a Sunday, a premise somewhat undermined by the children’s whirlwind exuberance. It was first tweeted last week by Robbie Meredith, a BBC arts and education correspondent who encountered the clip while researching a report.
I have found this frankly wonderful archive of a Northern Ireland primary #school disco in the 1960s while working on a report and it might be the best thing I’ve ever seen. pic.twitter.com/BrQP5lehe0
— Robbie Meredith (@robbeorn) May 30, 2022
