Presenter Keith Bracey picks out the highlights from 1966 for the northern edition of magazine show Town and Around. 'Kiwi gent' Barry Crump, sharp-shooting country singer Tex Morton, singer Lee Grant and axeman Sonny Bolstad feature, alongside visitors including US comedian Shelley Berman, actor Chips Rafferty and English TV presenter (Pavlova Paradise author) Austin Mitchell, who criticises the state of local media. Keith's picks gravitate to the light-hearted, with probing coverage of gardening with gnomes and a man who uses a carrot as a musical instrument.

This 65 minute long documentary looks at the treatment of New Zealand children born with cerebral palsy (a set of conditions which affect motor control, caused by brain defects that typically occur around pregnancy and birth). Made for the Department of Health, the National Film Unit production visits a specialist unit in Rotorua, to praise the understanding and care applied to help the ‘cerebral palsied’ live full lives. Director Frank Chilton was made an OBE for services to handicapped children. This film won a Diploma of Merit at the 1957 Edinburgh Film Festival.

John Wilkinson didn’t realise until after the end of World War ll that he’d broken his back when the plane he was piloting in North Africa was shot down. Captured and beaten up by Italian soldiers, interrogated by the Gestapo, John eventually ended up in the notorious Stalag Luft III prison camp in what is now Poland. He was involved in the Wooden Horse Escape, one of the most famous of the war. Later he would meet his future wife at the camp, a displaced person from Lithuania. Now 95, John’s memory of his wartime experiences remains undimmed.