Why golden years of TV were a turn off for me...
The sad passing of Blue Peter presenter John noakes led to a widespread outbreak of Glory Days Syndrome.
Sufferers are gripped by an unshakeable conviction that tv was better ‘back in the day’ and that childhood itself is now not a patch on what it once was.
i was never a huge Blue Peter fan, in part because my sister got a letter from formidable producer Biddy Baxter, complete with a badge sporting the show’s ship logo.
the fact she earned this by crafting something using sticky-back plastic (was that a euphemism for Sellotape or for fablon, whose mention would have sullied auntie Beeb’s non-commercial nature?) did nothing to assuage my unwarranted jealousy.
for me, childhood television was pretty rank. there were so few channels that my parents would call me in if a cartoon was on – tom and Jerry was a drop-that-space-hopper-and-come-running event.
Growing up in Stranraer, in the deep South-west, we got ulster tv, not Stv. Glen Michael’s Cartoon Cavalcade and Paladin passed me by.
utv teased with adverts for things you couldn’t get here – ormo bread, Kimberley, Mikado and coconut cream biscuits. it was like living between two worlds, Scotland and ireland.
then utv terrified you with public service announcements. at the height of the troubles, they ran an ad counselling against toy guns as Christmas presents.
i thought this meant the batterypowered machine gun/rocket-launcher combo from Chadwick’s newsagent would never be under my tree.
Saturday mornings had a couple of black-and-white shows whose theme tunes were the best thing about them.
the adventures of robinson Crusoe brought home the interminable boredom of being marooned on a desert island by being interminably boring.
the flashing Blade was action-packed, but who knew what was going on? it was dubbed, cut down from the original french version and set during the War of the Mantuan Succession – no, me neither.
the Magic roundabout was also french and baffling. emma thompson’s father, who narrated it here, simply made up stories based on what he saw.
Mr Benn ran to just 13 episodes. With so little time, he should have stuck with the cool astronaut and red Knight outfits and skipped that chef and circus performer faff.
the Double Deckers was too metropolitan; Why Don’t you Just Switch off your television Set and Go out and Do Something less Boring instead? was advice i took literally.
Best bet was a Sunday afternoon war film. the longest Day is in my top five all-time favourites, vying with the Battle of Britain, the Dam Busters, the Cruel Sea and ice Cold in alex.
IROARED at Cliff robertson not to take his 633 Squadron Mosquito on that last run down the fjord in an ill-fated bid to suppress the German flak… and i stared at lawrence of arabia so hard (i even raced for a glass of water – it was so atmospheric i was parched and there was no ‘live pause’ then) that my eyes felt like director Sir David lean’s.
he spent so long filming in the Jordanian desert that he had to have his eyeballs surgically popped out to sweep the sand from their orbits.
Children today have 24-hour cartoons and shows pitched smack at their age group. Good for them.
But nothing will ever beat being propped on the couch in my parents’ home as the rain mizzled the windows and Sands of iwo Jima fired up on the old itt telly.
hang on… looks like i’ve come down with a touch of Glory Days Syndrome too.