The absolute very first time I wrote about British Kids TV in the 70s and 80s was last week in Part One, so here (predictably I know) is Part Two. The focus this time is on animation and puppetry where, compared to the slick stuff coming over from the States, British creatives brought their own unique idiosyncratic approach ...by which I mean quirky characters, dodgy production values and some distinctly dubious double entendres.
I’ll steer clear of Saturday morning TV, Play School and Magic Roundabout because I've covered them in earlier blogs (Magic Roundabout being the most popular of the 42 I've published so far....which tells me a great deal about you lot) and will focus on some other Great British classics instead.
Us Brits have always been fond of our soft toy animals. We had ones which fitted over your hand (Basil Brush with fellow puppets, Mr Derek & Mr Roy, and Harry Corbett's Sooty, Soo & Sweep), ones which vaguely resembled birds and sat on your knee (Emu & Orville - no better advocates for the abolition of the RSPB), ones which moved by stop-animation, lived on the moon and looked like socks (the Clangers along with Soupdragon which happened to be what we called the vicar's wife when we were younger because of a truly uncanny resemblance) and then that saggy old cloth cat, Bagpuss, who, not so long ago apparently, could be found in "an unusual shop which didn't sell anything" (a sort of olden day WH Smiths) but managed at least to avoid the indignity of a hand up the backside....as far as we know anyway.
With an eye overseas on Sesame Street and similar shows, we then got ones so big that they ended up being costumes for actors to wear which led to Bernie Clifton riding an orange ostrich across the Crackerjack stage and the Wombles performing on TOTP or picking up litter on Wimbledon Common, highlighting an environmental conscience long before Greta Thunberg turned up in Glasgow for COP26.
Greta and her mates love to blame earlier generations for impending climate catastrophe but our green creds in the 70s & 80s were surprisingly good. Remember, our milk carts were electric vehicles long before hybrid cars came along (not only saving the planet but avoiding waking people up early in the morning too). We carried our shopping out of the supermarket in brown paper not plastic bags and we wrapped our dinner in newspaper once, having left the car at home, we'd walked to the Chippy to pick it up. In fact that was how we got to school too unless we rode our bikes. We turned our electricity off for a couple of hours most evenings (not always voluntarily I grant you - particularly during the winter of discontent) and for a small reward we recycled all our (glass not plastic) bottles, not via some carbon-hungry mechanical process but by paying someone to wash them up. And we’re the ones who’ve fucked the planet?
When it came to trains (evil coal-burning ones I'm afraid), we were spoiled for choice. There was Ivor The Engine voiced by Oliver 'Bagpuss' Postgate (who even did the puffing sounds too) and then along came Ringo Starr’s Thomas The Tank Engine and his Fat Controller. Even to this day, there’s a heated debate amongst locomotive aficionados as to which was the superior programme. I found this well-considered argument on a railway buff’s website (I’ve not got it bookmarked – I was just surfing the net for research purposes, honest): “Thomas, on the other hand, is populated by sociopathic little shits in engine form based on a nasty, rigid Little England morality that borders on medieval”. I’m going to stick my neck out here and suggest he was on Team Ivor.
Our animation was generally a little more, well, basic than the US versions. Mr Benn could’ve been drawn in our primary school classroom and what on earth was Bod? I couldn’t work out if this little bald chap was 3 or 83 (he’s like Stewie from Family Guy). It’s impossible not to rewatch the episodes without reaching the conclusion that the creative team were clearly smoking something at the time.
Danger Mouse was a cartoon about a secret service rodent saving the world from a tyrannical toad and a vampire duck. Sounds like some more wacky baccy here too. It was on ITV which meant, with their healthy advertising revenues in the days when people actually watched TV, they put some decent money into the production values. It was good enough to be nominated for 11 BAFTAS but didn't win one because the only award that channel ever secured was the token one patronisingly 'voted for by you the viewer'.
Penfold was voiced by Terry Scott and Danger Mouse by June Whitfield…oh no, wait, it was David Jason. Each show needed 2000 drawings which took ages to produce and cost a fortune so check out how many times there’s a black-out or a snow-storm with just DM’s eyes showing – it was the go-to sequence when they were running behind schedule or above budget.
Whilst I have a soft spot for many of the US cartoons – Top Cat, Wacky Races et al – I love the fact our British sense of humour meant we slipped a few adult references into the shows made over here to keep both the children and their parents entertained. I’ve mentioned the drug-taking references and anti-French sentiment in Magic Roundabout in an earlier blog (ah, so that's why it was my most popular) but I’ve just seen a couple of episodes of Roobarb & Custard, the wobbly animation show where the cat's called Custard but is pink, the trees look suspiciously like hairy testicles and they refer to something called a 'furry triangle'. I’m not making this up. I’d love to think the same was true of Captain Pugwash but, sadly, Master Bates and Seaman Staines actually were made up. And Roger the Cabin Boy wasn't even a real character let alone a ship's order.
But this subtle adult humour in kids TV was nothing compared to the little-known Xmas tradition in the TV industry of the 70s whereby BBC & ITV production teams would create private videos of some of the favourite shows of the time, featuring out-takes and original material, to play at their own and each other’s Xmas parties in an informal contest to see who’d produced the best. It was like the truce on the Western Front with the footie game on Xmas Day. There are a couple of absolute pearlers from Rainbow and Tom Baker's Dr Who. You really do need to watch them both just so you believe me when I talk about the innuendo and smuttiness which was always bubbling just under the surface when the Brits did kids TV in the good old days.
I know I write a stream of nonsense every now and then but never let it be said that I don’t serve up a treat once in a while. Dripping with double entendres, here’s Rainbow and Dr Who.
Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...CHOCOLATE BARS
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