There is a part of the that would love to live in the Swinging Sixties - you know, the music, the styles, the mood and the spirit; it just cries out to me. Alas I'm too late for the party, so all I can do is to experience it vicariously through the culture from the period, and the best example I've found is a little known thirty year old British film. Although billed as a comedy drama, "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" is not especially comedic, nor is it very dramatic; yet the film possesses a certain je ne sais quoi that makes it one of my favourite films.

"Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" is the Swinging Sixties. You can forget "Blow Up" and you can keep "Alfie", this film has got it all; the clothes, the psychedelic visuals, the music and the atmosphere. It also has, unlike the overrated "Blow Up", a storyline. The film centres around girl-obsessed teenager Jamie McGregor, played with great spirit by the late Barry Evans, and his efforts to woo Mary, the girl of his dreams, as well as detailing the other "birds" he encounters along the way. Jamie has known Mary throughout school - I say "known", but he's never really spoken to her and that's probably fuelled the attraction. By the time we join the story, he's reached the stage of attempting to talk to her, but he's always confounded by some other element - like her best friend Claire, or, even worse, her boyfriend, who at this point in the film is some posh twonk with a flash car. Jamie has a pushbike, so he's one-nil down.

While Jamie waits for the right opportunity to get Mary, he certainly keeps himself busy, and falls into a number of casual encounters. First off there's Linda, or 'runny old Linda' as Jamie and his friends used to call her at school. Linda possesses a whiny voice and displays stunning ignorance of anything going on around her. She looks half-decent, so as long as she keeps her mouth shut, she's OK in Jamie's book. Anyway, they go out on a "date", which involves them going to the chip shop for Linda's dad(!?!), and it all goes pear-shaped when Linda doesn't appear to be interested in snogging Jamie, and he spots his beloved Mary out with his best mate, Spike. As The Rolling Stones put it, Jamie, "you'd better move on".

Second in line is Paula, and she's heavily involved in he local church youth group. Hmm, not a good bet for some action, you'd think, but as Jamie soon finds out, she's a bit of a wild child (well, as wild as a bible basher can be). She snogs him in the church disco as the lights fail, while the Spencer Davis Group do their stuff on stage, and tussles with him in a dressing room. She has a best friend, Cath, who is purportedly female but looks more like a giraffe. In fact, she is involved in a funny scene in the film, at a mad orgiastic party in a furniture store. Everyone's racing around the store looking for a partner, and Spike spots Cath bending over. Liking what he sees, he grabs her and propositions her... and then she turns around. Judging by the look of sheer terror on his face, you'd think that Spike had just looked into the face of Satan himself. In truth, you'd probably be right...

Then there's a brief encounter with Audrey, who is very pretty and very posh. Things are looking good for Jamie here, especially when she sits on his knee... pity she does so right in front of her boyfriend. Ah well, not to worry, because, seconds later he meets Caroline, who is also very pretty and very posh. Oh, and I nearly forgot, she's also very mad. She laughs at nothing in particular and constantly utters the word "soopah!". She and Jamie end up playing golf, which leads to Caroline inviting our hero to stay for the weekend in a "very big house in the country". If it is possible for this film to get any more weird, this is where it happens. Denholm Elliott plays Caroline's dad - he gets pissed and gets everyone else pissed, while Caroline's mum comes on to Jamie. Then Caroline takes Jamie upstairs to bed, but she and the rest of the household engage in some strange, farcical game which involves them creeping around the house - Denholm ends up with Ingrid, the German maid, while Jamie has a lucky escape as Caroline's mum knocks on his bedroom door... but he's not there. Anyway, Jamie ends up in Caroline's bedroom, and looks set to pop his cork when Caroline, completely blotto, falls asleep.

Things take a turn for the better when Jamie goes with Audrey to the aforementioned orgiastic party in the furniture shop... not only does he score with Audrey, but he also ends up leaving the next morning with Mary. They talk about not wanting serious relationships, and, poignantly, Mary reveals that she had written 'Mrs Jamie McGregor' on her school books. "But you didn't know me!" cries Jamie. "I know", answers Mary, "...but I wanted to". Anyway, they end up going out and spend a weekend away together... which is where things start to fall apart. Jamie, despite saying he doesn't want anything serious, is falling for Mary and can't handle her nonchalant attitude to their relationship, so much so that he throws a massive strop and jumps off the boat they're on at the time. Not to kill himself, you understand, just that he wanted to get off.

A few months elapse, and Jamie and Spike are working as bus conductors in the summer before they leave Stevenage for university. Jamie spots Mary talking to her friend Claire, and reminisces about their relationship. "It seems a million years ago now..." he mutters, even though it was only a couple of months, but we can understand the sentiment. However, the moment soon passes, and he switches his attention to Clare, who, Spike informs him, is going to the same university as them... here we go round again!

The script, by Hunter Davies from his own popular novel, was a quirky and interesting piece, using Jamie as a narrator by way of monologues, which works because they are never presented direct to camera. It also gives us an insight into Jamie's character and makes him more likeable. Davies also throws a few surreal elements in there as well, from Jamie's thoroughly bizarre parents through to his daydreams, which are rendered in suitably mindbending fashion thanks to director Clive Donner and clever editing tricks from Richard Williams Studios, who also provided the colour-shifting way-out title graphics. Indeed, Donner's direction demonstrates a careful use of creativity, which presents the "strangeness" of those changing times without trying to make it a head-trip, which is what happened to other films of the period. He also shows Jamie riding a bike while his feet are balanced on the handlebars!

Donner was helped in his task by a capable cast. As the lead, Barry Evans carries the film well and with a lot of charm that endears the character of Jamie to the audience. He also makes you forget the fact that he looks at least five years too old to still be at school. Not only was he lucky enough to get a good role in such a good film, he was also lucky enough to star with a number of good-looking actresses, like Judy Geeson. Judy Geeson!! As well as being staggeringly beautiful, Geeson was one of those actresses who was in everything during the late 'sixties/early 'seventies, and here she handled Mary's cool, controlled character very well indeed. Angela Scoular put in a top performance as the dotty Caroline, as did Vanessa Howard as the lovely Audrey.

I've also got to mention the music, especially as the soundtrack album is spawned has recently been re-released on CD. Clive Donner eschewed the traditional method of an instrumental soundtrack in favour of a collection of pop songs created by artists of the day, and to this end The Spencer Davis Group were recruited to compose a number of songs. As it turned out, prominent member Steve Winwood was about to leave to form Traffic, so Traffic were also comissioned to come up with a few tracks. The end result is an impressive affair, with The Spencer Davis Group's r'n'b-based cuts set against the more psychedelic contributions from Traffic. Standout tracks include Spencer Davis' 'Looking Back', where rattling percussion and a searing Hammond Organ combine to back the wry lyric "Well, I was looking back to see, if she was looking back to see, if he was looking back at me"; and Traffic's title track 'Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush', which builds up with snappy drums and organ bursts, breaks down to jangly guitars and jaunty flute before starting up again. However, the best track is the one contribution from former John's Children member Andy Ellison. His 'It's Been A Long Time' wasn't actually written for the film, but it is probably the most appropriate. The sparse string, tambourine and trumpet arrangement creates an almost downbeat atmosphere that is at odds with the lyric: "It's been a long time, and now it's love...". However, this contrasts reflects Jamie's situation perfectly; things go against him, but he doesn't give up hope. These songs were slotted into the film cleverly by the film's music editor, Simon Napier-Bell, who also wrote and produced the Andy Ellison track. Napier-Bell had some tracks playing on the radio in the background (a novel idea back then), whilst remixing and editing the tracks as instrumental pieces to create incidental music.

The film was released in February 1968 to mixed reviews - parts of the music press and the teen mags like NME and Fab 208 were complimentary, while other organs were less so; Time Out deemed it "so charmless as to be unwatchable". However, the passage of time has led to a general re-evaluation of the film, which now has a sizeable cult following. What is strange is the fact that it was given an 'X' certificate, especially as, by today's standards, it all looks rather tame. Aside from the bad language and some nudity, there's nothing in there to corrupt young minds... unless you count some of the hairstyles, of course. It's a shame, because the 'X' certificate excluded the teenage audience who would have appreciated the film the most from actually seeing it - possibly the reason why the film isn't better known.

Much of the film's appeal (for me anyway) lies in the fact that it encapsualtes the teenage period of your life, and the adventures (or misadventures) with the opposite sex. "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" reminds me what it was like to be a teenager - OK, I'm only in my mid-twenties, but it seems so different now; things weren't as complicated back then. Call it nostalgia, call it whatever you like - the film just gets me. The 'eighties saw a glut of American teen movies like "The Breakfast Club", "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" and "Pretty in Pink", which were all very entertaining, yet I feel that "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" is a closer reflection of my formative years, possibly because it was British, and the fact that the weather was greyer - the atmosphere of the film was too. Clive Donner remarked that he was "certainly aware while I was making it of the sadness; a sort of emptiness of the heart". Throughout the film, Jamie strives to go out with Mary, and manages to achieve it after all the setbacks, but when he gets his final reward, he realises it won't work. He realises that he prefers the chase - trying to get the girl, rather than getting her. This moment of clarity speaks greater value than any chummy 'golden moment' that you'd find in the aforementioned American films.

Of course, it's all very well me saying that "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" is the definitive representation of the 'swinging sixties', but I wasn't there - indeed, it's highly likely that the 'swinging sixties' didn't swing as much as we all think. But that doesn't matter, no. What the film does reflect is the perceived notion of the 'swinging sixties'; teenagers having wild parties in their father's furniture stores, Jamie and Caroline trying on all manner of strange gaudy plastic clothes in a zippy montage of clips, and youths dashing around town in top 'sixties convertibles before ending up at casinos. Add to this the fact that the film was made slap bang in the middle of those halcyon days, and you have your quintessential 1960s psuedo-history lesson.

The film turns up on television every two or three years; unfortunately, the most recent showing to date was a tribute to Barry Evans, who has sadly died. After "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush", Evans became better known as a TV sitcom star with series like "Doctor in the House" and "Mind Your Language", yet I feel that the underrated British film that effectively started his career is not only a good tribute to the 'swinging sixties', but also a fitting tribute to a fine actor.