AN unusual photocall, this.
Six young women - “dollybirds,” as the Evening Times insisted on calling them, but then this was 1977 - demonstrated the art of fitness training to music, observed by Jock Stein, the legendary Celtic manager, and Dave McParland, who had led Partick Thistle to a 1971 League Cup final victory over Celtic and was now Stein’s assistant.
The paper said the idea of using pop music to get fit had been adopted five years earlier by the third man in the photograph, Ken Woolcott, who is standing on the left. He was a senior coach to the British Amateur Athletics Board and sports liaison officer for a fruit-drinks firm. “The system is claimed to keep any person fit and trim doing exercises to the beat of pop music,” the article continued.
In the Queen’s Birthday Honours of 2012, an MBE was awarded to Mr Woolcott. The announcement said he “created Popmobility in 1967, initially as a novel way for the Middlesex Ladies’ Athletics Club to keep fit. Popmobility continues to this day with followers of all ages training regularly at a local level.”
Mr Woolcott’s local dental practice, in Harrow, Middlesex, said it was honoured to have him as a patient, noting that he had received his MBE at the age of 95. “Ken,” it added, “has had a long and distinguished career in sport and health which led him to create the highly successful Popmobility concept in 1967, this went on to change the face of personal fitness throughout the 1970s.”
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