“WHY I’m a Druid – by Ken Barlow,” ran the headline of an Adver front page story this week in 1978.

Readers hoping for a juicy Coronation Street plotline involving ancient religions down t’Rovers were sorely disappointed, though.

The Druid wasn’t Ken Barlow but rather the man who played him, and who granted us an exclusive interview at Stonehenge.

In those days Coronation Street, already 18 years old, was the undisputed king of the soaps, with viewing figures well into eight digits.

Reporter Lesley Fox wrote: “TV’s Ken Barlow told me today in an exclusive interview about his life as a Druid.

“The Coronation Street star had just finished a four-hour ceremony at the Midsummer Solstice at Stonehenge.

“Ken, alias William Roache, said that his four years as a Druid had helped put his life in perspective.”

The star revealed: “It is much more difficult than acting. It is not a dead or archaic religion.

“It is a philosophy and the way of looking for the truth. It teaches you to study the basic approach and reason for life.”

At about 3am the Druids had been escorted by the police through a subway to the perimeter of the stones, but their ceremonial words had to contend with the sounds from a nearby rock festival. The actor was undaunted.

He said: “It is what we have come to expect. It is the meaning behind the ceremony that we look for.”

Aside from journeys of the spirit, more conventional forms of transport featured in various Adver stories that week 38 years ago.

One was ridden by a young man called Tim Levis, who was the reigning British skateboard champion.

Our photographer captured him in mid-leap during something called the ’78 Wiltshire Roadcraft show, an exhibition of various forms of transport which was held at Wroughton.

Also on display in the summer sun was one of the strangest motorcycles of the era. Known as the Quasar, the 850cc £3,500 machine had a roof and looked like one side of a bisected sports car.

As was traditional among local newspapers at the time, we sought a glamorous young woman to pose at the controls. Julie Pullen from Swindon obliged.

Few Quasars were produced but most survive, and the machines have a dedicated fan base.

Motorcycles of a very different kind were favoured by Swindon man Dick Sullivan, a 31-year-old British Rail crane driver who kept a workshop behind his family’s flower shop.

His passion, we revealed, was coaxing terrifying speeds from extremely light machines with tiny engines.

He was extremely good at it; 90mph from a 50cc motor and 125mph from 125ccs was as impressive as it was terrifying to the uninitiated.

By 1978 he was three times UK motorcycle sprint champion and held 11 British record and a world record.

He had given up conventional road racing in 1972, as the growing big-money ethos conflicted with his DIY approach.

“They were buying their speed rather than developing it themselves,” he said.

He went on to become a well-respected figure in the world of high performance engineering.

A Mk2 Ford Cortina belonging to an unfortunate motorist called John Johnson travelled from Swindon to a patch of land near Lambourn, but unfortunately it wasn’t driven by him but an unknown thief.

He’d paid £795 for the car, but when it was found it was missing various vital parts, notably its wheels and the new engine he’d just paid £157 to have installed.

In an especially bitter twist to the story, he’d planned a journey to Luton with his girlfriend but decided to take a train rather than drive because the new engine was still being run in.

The Cortina vanished after he left it in the car park at Swindon station.

When we spoke to the understandably disgruntled 24-year-old he was waiting to hear from his insurance company, so there was at least a chance of some sort of happy ending to the tale.

On the same page we ran a story of somebody who’d experienced the opposite form of luck.

Bob Fowler, landlord of the George Hotel on Swindon’s Eastcott Hill, parlayed 15p into a cool £1,000 without even leaving the premises.

The 15p was all he had in his pocket, so he used it to play the pub’s fruit machine. Three bars came up and won him a jackpot of £1 in tokens.

Mr Fowler then cashed in the tokens and bought four scratchcards called Ladbroke’s Cashcade tickets.

We said: “Bob’s wife, Ann, scraped off then covering from the football scores on the ticket.

“The first three were losers but the fourth was a winner, three goals in the first half, two in the second with three for the opponent.

“Ann then began to scratch off the covering from the winning figure.

“First came the £ sign and then the first nought, so Bob knew that they had won at least £10, then £100 and finally the £1,000 figure was revealed.”

Bob told us: “Ann looked at me and went pale. I looked at it a lot of times before I believed it.”