In 1965 Beatlemania was hitting its peak in America, with the band about to embark on their second US tour. But despite their success, speculation was already rife about alternative careers for the Fab Four “once the screaming stopped”. “The question of what the Beatles will do when they grow up is a matter of urgency,” wrote the Observer’s drama critic Ronald Bryden in the 25 April issue.

In a feature headlined “Where Old Beatles Go”, he noted that “the rustle of Time’s winged chariot [was] hurrying at their backs”. The oldest member of the band, John Lennon, hadn’t even turned 25, but in a market driven by teenagers, the quartet were seen to be approaching their sell-by date.

The Beatles were shooting Help! in Nassau. Their first film, A Hard Day’s Night, had shown they were comfortable sending themselves up on camera, and Bryden ponders whether a future in comedy lay ahead, as Liverpool’s answer to the Marx Brothers perhaps, although he concedes: “No one likes to raise expectations of the boys’ acting too high.”

By contrast, raising expectations was the founding ethos of the comprehensive school system which in 1965 was in its infancy. In the same issue, journalist Virginia Makins went behind the scenes at the pioneering Thomas Bennett school in Crawley, Sussex – one of the first in the country to succeed in being truly comprehensive. “Thomas Bennett takes the whole of one Crawley neighbourhood, and therefore gets its fair share of able children, stupid children, geniuses and psychopaths,” she observes. The school had been getting some impressive exam results, encouraging even the most disadvantaged children to fulfil their potential – unlike some secondary moderns where, one teacher recalls: “There was an R stream. That stood for Rural; they were sent out to dig the garden.”