s if anyone needed reminding, Thunderbirds are Go. A new hi-tech version of the muchloved puppet series launched last night, introducing a whole new generation to the curious denizens of Tracy Island we all know and love: with heads nearly as big as their bodies and a fondness for sitting about in zip-up cardigans playing easylistening favourites in between saving the world.

Indeed, whether relaxing at home or strapped into their rocket ships, the Tracy family rarely moved from their chairs, which was probably just as well, for on the rare occasions they tried walking, their customary gait suggested people cautiously inching their way to the lavatory after a sudden calamity in their digestive tract.

However, the new series comes with no strings attached. Instead, it’s positively dripping with CGI and all the space-age panoply that 21st-century filmmaking can muster. Yet I, for one, will lament the increased sophistication of the new incarnation. So potent was the allure of the stiff-limbed original Sixties series, broadcast every Saturday morning on ITV, that even now I only have to hear the iconic theme tune and my mouth is filled in a Pavlovian response with the taste of my mum’s Saturday lunchtime running buffet – Heinz Cream of Tomato soup and cheese rolls.

Indeed, the world of Gerry Anderson provided me, and many of my ilk who grew up in that decade, with our first role models – Supercar’s Mike Mercury, with his eyebrows the width of garden hedges; Fireball XL5’s suave, golden-haired captain Steve Zodiac; and Stingray’s Commander Shore, resembling a maritime Bernard Ingham, and of such (literally) squarejawed determination that David Cameron would surely give worlds to have him in charge of his election campaign. Anything could happen in the next half-hour.

And then there were the women; the demure and curvaceous Venus, the ethereal Marina, and, of course, the chain-smoking Lady Penelope. I always hoped my first romantic experience might be at the hands of a single, experienced, older, extremely rich woman such as she. I’m still waiting.

And if I ever doubted the cultural importance of Thunderbirds, it was confirmed a few years back when I found myself shopping in my local Waterstones. In the queue at the till in front of me I recognised David Graham, the diminutive actor who provided the voice of Parker, the world’s most famous (and lugubrious) chauffeur. Not that I identified him by face – it was the familiar voice that sent the jolt of excitement coursing through my nervous system.

When the unsuspecting female shop assistant asked him if he would like a bag for his purchase, I never wanted anything so much in my life as to hear him reply: “Yus, M’lady.”