In September 1966, the Small Faces were offered a plum part in a feature film to be called Two Weeks in September. Ken Harper, who was Cliff Richard's film director, was due to direct the film and the boys would have starred alongside one Ms Brigitte Bardot. But they turned it down because of the naff script. The same month saw the band being shown on a half hour TV special for Granada. The show was broadcast on Wednesday 28 September but had been recorded a fortnight earlier before an invited audience of 250 of the band's fan club. "Steve broke a string during a number and replaced it while everyone waited. No editing." explained Mac. Assistant producer Rod Taylor claimed that it was the most exciting spectacular that Granada had made since the one they recorded with Little Richard.

Around this time, the band's popularity was reaching Beatlesque proportions. Before a gig in Glasgow, Ronnie was pushed through a shop window by the sheer weight of pursuing fans trying to touch any part of his anatomy and rip off any part of his clothing as a souvenir! And Ian McLagan was locked away in a police cell for the night for his own safety!

An incident at Oldham Athletic Football Club was even more frightening. the band was paraded around the ground just before a charity soccer match. the fans started going berserk and the boys jumped into their car, which was inside the ground being driven by their chauffer. The pitch was already soggy and fans started to surround the car in their hundreds. Kids were climbing on the roof. "The ground was pretty soft and the car just wouldn't move," Mac reported, "It was right in the middle of the pitch and it just started to go down and down and down. The four of us and the driver were getting the real horrors. The kids' faces were getting mashed up against the windows and I remember seeing one little kid being pushed down and her head disappearing out of sight. We were shouting "Look out for that kid" and then the roof of the car started to bow inward under the sheer weight of the kids on top. We were holding the roof up which was really starting to cave in and there wasn't much air in the car 'cos we couldn't open the windows which really set a panic in."

"When the teams came out for the game I think they realised what was going on. Eventually they pulled the crowd away and we started to move. But they couldn't clear everyone and we accidentally drove over a kid's leg. It was horrible. When we finally managed to get out of the ground we told the driver to drive as fast as he could. He was freaked out as much as all of us. We stopped a few miles down the road and the four of us just got out of the car and ran for ages over the moors, screaming our heads off."

• Part 12: US tour cancelled and disenchantment with Don Arden
• Return to part 10

Previously published in Darlings of Wapping Wharf Launderette