Roy Orbison?

[SledDawg]

Recently someone posted the attached amazing photo of the late, great rockstar Roy Orbison on an Airfix Facebook page. He's apparently accepting a big gift pile of Airfix aircraft kits including the then-new B-17, the Wellington, Lancaster and others. An attractive "bird" is is handing them to him.

All but one of those models is 1/72 scale, which was not widely adopted in the U.S. at the time. I think those would be pretty rare and expensive import kits back home, and it's obvious that he is very happy to get them! (I wonder what the customs duty was?)

Obviously a publicity photo, I wonder what the circumstances of this photo were? I suspect that that this happened while he was in the U.K. for the May-June1963 tour with then-rising Beatles.

Someone posted that this this photo was published in a 1963 issue of the Airfix magazine, but I have looked through all of them on the Internet Archive site

(See sample here: https://archive.org/details/airfix-magazine-apr-63/ and I do not see it.

It's of course well known that Roy was an expert, enthusiastic aircraft historian and modeler. There's an interview with him in some fan mag in the '60s where he holds forth on the Martin Baker M.B. 5 as his favorite plane! Who but a fanatic would have even known about it back then?

I wonder what happened to his collection. Man, I would love to have a model airplane built by Roy Orbison. Wow.

https://www.modelaviationdigital.com/modelaviation/november_2018/MobilePagedArticle.action?articleId=1433640#articleId1433640

Can anyone shed light on this?

[Gilbert_H]

Comes from an old Airfix Magazine, 1960's.

[Gilbert_H]

Airfix Magazine December 1964

[Sailorman]

Roy Orbison was in the UK in June 1963, July 1972 and March 1977. The packaging for the Flying Fortress is an early type and I doubt Airfix would have presented that in '72 or '77.

I've looked through my 1963 magazines for June, July and August '63 and I didn't come across that photo.

I'll try to have another look later.

Patrick

[peebeep]

The photo is the occasion of the Official Roy Orbison Fan Club UK presenting him with a bundle of kits as a gift from all his fans in the UK. Date was early sixties, somewhere in my loft archive I still have a copy of the Airfix Magazine in which it was published.

[Sailorman]

Found it! It's the December 1964 issue. I'll post a pic.

[Sailorman]

Here's the piece. Right click on the image and then click on "open in a new tab."

[Sailorman]

Wish I'd seen you post earlier Gilbert! It would have saved me rummaging through my old Airfix Mags .........Still that's something I enjoy doing anyway!

[Gilbert_H]

Patrick, 

I went through at least 30 Airfix Mags, only to find the Roy Orbison article on my PC in a PDF scan…

Every time I rummage through these old Airfix magazines, I am surprised by the wealth of information they contain. A real joy !

Gilbert

[SledDawg]

Sailorman,

Wow - that's great! Thank you so much. I didn't go far enough in the collection to see that.

And it's good to confirm that this was while he was there on the Beatles tour!

I think I will share it on that FB page - there are probably folks there who are not on this site.

Thanks again!

Dave G.

[dogsbody]

Lots of old Airfix mags here:

https://archive.org/search.php?query=airfix+magazine&and%5B%5D=subject%3A%22airfix+magazine%22&sort=titleSorter&form=MY01SV&OCID=MY01SV

Chris