Banned.-

a rare survivor from an original, pre-ban, issue of only 500 copies, this salacious caricature of then prime minister, Harold Wilson, with its explicit reference to his long-rumoured affair with his private secretary, Marcia Williams, later Lady Falkender, was the publicity-grabbing brainchild of the band’s manager, Tony Secunda. It was openly distributed as a postcard to journalists, disc jockeys and radio stations, causing Wilson to sue the band and manager for libel, in a case which he won in October, 1967, after which the judge ordered that all proceeds from sales of the record, which reached number 2 in the charts, be donated to charities of Wilson’s choosing, costing the band a fortune in lost earnings.

Released on August 25th, 1967, the song, ‘Flowers in the Rain’, with it’s characteristic orchestral instrumentation arranged by a young Tony Visconti, is perhaps most famous for being the first single ever to be played on the newly launched Radio 1, by Tony Blackburn at 6.55 a.m. on 30th September the same year.

This promotional postcard was designed by Neil Smith in very much the ‘psychedelic’ style of the day. It depicts in a central oval a naked Wilson on a bed by a scantily clad, Beardsleyesque, figure holding a fan reading ‘Mrs Williams, Harold’s VERY personal secretary’, with the prime minister’s wife, Mary Wilson, peering from behind the curtains, the scene surrounded by the words ‘Disgusting, Depraved, Despicable though Harold may be, Beautiful is the only word to describe Flowers in the Rain by The Move, Released Aug. 25th’. On the verso, it is addressed to a journalist at a Derbyshire newspaper, bearing a 3d stamp, postmarked 23rd August, 1967,

monochrome offset lithograph, 175 x 135 mm. (8 1/4 x 5 1/4 in), inscribed in ink with address and franked postage stamp on verso, generally well preserved,