THE skill in gatecrashing an adult film show, for any kid living during the golden era of the local picture palace, lay not just in bluffing a way past the stiff-necked Cinema attendant but in avoiding a mid-show tap on the shoulder.

This entailed creeping to an isolated corner and huddling down as unobtrusively as possible in the seat, to reduce the chance of the attendant (or fire-bobby, as he was known) making a follow-up check.

It seems strange in these days of over-exposure to television's sex and violence that it was once strictly forbidden for any kid under the age of 16 to attend a comparatively tame A-film programme without being accompanied by an adult.

Ken Melling of Chancery Lane, Parr, drifts us back to those days of long picture queues, cinema organs, usherettes with trays of ice cream and the occasional 'H for horror' film (later X-category). "Seeing the Rivoli Cinema being demolished, brought flashbacks from the 1940s," he says, "when St Helens was packed with picture-houses." There were more than half-a-dozen in the immediate town-centre area and a cluster of others on the fringe.

And the big challenge for any under-16 wishing to see an A-film was in trying to con the cashier and the normally eagle-eyed fireman . . . "by stretching up as tall as possible and speaking with as deep a voice as you could manage."

For some, the squeaky baritone that was emmited, before the juvenile voice had properly broken, led to their immediate unmasking. Ken Melling met with mixed fortunes. Trying to adopy a grown-up attitude, while still a schoolboy, he once tried to gatecrash a film programme at the Hippodrome Cinema in St Helens along with an even smaller chum.

Recalls Ken: "There was a tap on my shoulder. It turned out to be Paul Green, the doorman -- and five seconds later we were flung out in the rain."

Sometimes it was possible to wheedle some adult into taking an under-age cinemagoer in. But usually the kids got the cold shoulder and most took their chances on walking tall and talking deep.

"It seemed to take ages to grow up," says Ken, who once managed to bluff his way into a raunchy film show thanks to an old Victorian-style overcoat given to him by his granny. "It felt like I was hiding inside it, but I headed for the Capitol." Standing on tip-toe at the ticket booth, collar well up, Ken said in his best low voice: "One, please!"

"To my amazement I was handed a ticket. I walked straight ahead without turning my head, crushed down in my seat, eyes glued to the screen -- waiting for an imaginary tap on the shoulder." Happily, Ken survived to the end of the show. And he'll bring memories flooding back for the more mature customers of this column in recalling the little alcove area in the Scala Cinema, which was to be replaced by a supermarket. It was the place where courting couples used to cuddle up.

The schoolboy Ken ended up there, more by accident than design. "I'd queued for more than an hour to see the big film of the time, 'They Died with their Boots On' and ended up in the only available seat close to a wall in the alcove. All I could see was mainly that blank wall with an occasional glimpse of Errol Flynn's arm!"

Ken met with further disappointment when he and his pal, Eddie, switched their attention the the Parr Dog (the nickname by which the Parrvilion Cinema at Fingerpost, now a glass company premises, was universally known).

The cheapest seats then cost sevenpence in old money (just over 2p). "But we decided to go up-market and went into the ninepenny seats," Ken recalls. "We were just sitting comfortably when somebody from among our section threw something at the screen." A common enough incident in times when kids took apples and carrots to munch on during the cinema programnme.

"The doorman, Big Mack, who seemed 7ft tall to us kids then, blamed us for the outrage, grabbed us and ejected us through the doors in record time."

Returning to his Rivoli Cinema reminiscences, Ken flips back to his late youth and the romance of the Sunday night shows. "Upstairs in the Riv, it was like a catwalk, with heads turning round everywhere, looking at young couples -- all dressed up to the nines -- who had clicked the night before at Holy Cross or one of the other local hops around town."

THANKS Ken, for those memory-stirring reflections on the simple social life of yesteryear.