The absolute very first time I remember watching Saturday morning TV was the classic mid-1970s line-up of Champion The Wonder Horse, Wacky Races, Banana Splits and Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. Tiswas was on ITV and so was banned in my middle class house although I’d sneakily switch channels whenever John Craven was on Swap Shop (although only after I’d clocked his latest jumper so I could join in the banter at school on Monday).
I know that probably wasn’t the actual line-up (someone is bound to google it) but it's pretty representative because both of the TV channels had a very formulaic approach to Saturday morning TV (there was a third – BBC2 – but no one under the age of 45 watched that except at 9pm when Monty Python, Not The Nine O'Clock News or the Young Ones were on).
In those days, apart from John Craven (if not his jumpers), silliness and juvenile humour were the main tactics in capturing the youth market at the start of the weekend. I can only assume the Beeb were contractually obliged to kick off with a live-action animal series because we always had to endure a series of potential pet-food candidates - Champion the Wonder Horse / Skippy / Lassie - before the fun began. It seems odd to say that super-smart animals solving crimes represented the least silly programme of the whole morning but they were still essential viewing compared to whatever was on BBC2 (probably Open University or the Test Card).
With Black Beauty on ITV (btw, can a theme tune be onomatopoeic? it just sounds like a galloping horse, doesn't it? have a listen), the only UK offering in this genre on BBC was Animal Magic with Johnny Morris but by that stage, unfortunately for Johnny, the Americans had made us believe that animals really could outwit the local constabulary and rescue missing persons so putting on dodgy impressions and pretending to hold conversations with the residents of Bristol Zoo wasn't going to fool us one bit.
After that, it was cartoon heaven (I’m thinking Wacky Races, Catch the Pigeon, Hong Kong Phooey, Flintstones, Scooby Doo, Top Cat etc – all the Looney Tunes stable was on ITV and so was out-of-bounds for me). This was 100% American fare because British cartoons weren’t invented until the 90s (apart from Mr Benn and Bod who looked like they’d been animated by kids several years below me in primary school). Instead, the Brits created cuddly puppets for a younger age group (Bagpuss, The Clangers, Basil Brush and The Wombles) but these tended to offer a serious moral message and so weren’t considered silly enough for Saturday mornings.
Our friends across the Atlantic also sent us Banana Splits and the Monkees, one of which was about a band which dressed up in silly costumes and couldn't play their instruments and the other was Banan....yes, fair enough, bit of an obvious set-up and a cheap shot too (love you, Davy Jones). I’ve got a punk version of the Tra-La-La song by the Dickies who, while other punk bands were goading us to smash the system, preferred to reaffirm their anarchic principles by singing “flipping like a pancake, popping like a cork, Fleagle, Bingo, Drooper and Snork”. I know you can pogo to it but gobbing and sticking the Vs up while "making up a mess of fun, lots of fun for everyone" doesn't exactly make it an anti-establishment anthem.
Anyway, back to Saturday morning TV and the emergence of homegrown programmes like Tiswas (silly and funny), Swap Shop (slightly silly and slightly funny) and the rise of Noel Edmonds and, in due course, his wobbly pink friend (about as funny as ceefax or my 'wobbly pink friend' joke). And what a hypocrite Edmonds was for consistently slagging off Tiswas by dismissing it as a "worthless gunk-fest" and then later making a fortune by copying the same format for his own show.
The phone-ins were generally pretty anodyne stuff…other than Matt Bianco’s appearance on Saturday Superstore, with Mike ‘let’s not Relax’ Read, when a caller named Simon Roberts became an instant hero to thousands of secondary school kids by telling the band what he really thought of them (click here for a reminder). The 2 male band members look mortified, the studio audience (average age 7) are completely non-plussed and the female singer, Basia, just grins. Judging by her bandmates, she probably agreed with Simon.
I stopped watching Saturday morning TV once I left school because I stopped getting up earlier than Saturday afternoon but the theme tunes never left me. I reckon 75% of the people reading this (that would mean about 6 of you) would be able to sing any children's TV theme tune from the 70s/80s after hearing the first few notes (I'll name that tune in 3, Tom).
There were classics like Rainbow ("paint the whole world with a..."), Trumpton ("Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew...") and the Gerry Anderson shows (er, lots of key changes, the odd voiceover and a chorus belting out the name of the show - Stingray, Captain Scarlet, Thunderbirds - at random intervals) as well as some quirky left-field bangers like Chorlton and the Wheelies, Flashing Blade and the Double Deckers.
Hearing them now (and, as you can imagine, I just have), they immediately transport me back to a time before kids or jobs or marriage, when the toughest questions in your life were why Maggie Philbin fell in love with Keith Chegwin (or Noel Edmonds with Noel Edmonds) and how a mild-mannered janitor ended up becoming the number one super-guy. The only janitors I knew.....well, that's another story I guess.
Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME.....SKATEBOARD
Banana Split. Surreal fun which we all seemed to understand. “Drooper, take out the trash”, “look out it’s the sour grapes gang”. The playground chant “uh oh, Chungo” from danger island. The Cartoons were great too. who remembers Bez the beast “size of an elephant!” Haha great fun
Oh my, someone else who lived in a house where ITV broadcasts were so poor our aerial couldn’t pick them up. I thought I was the only one…
Don’t forget Flipper. Did I ever tell you I won a prize on the Mulit-Colotree Swap Shop? You know, the one you wrote the answer in on a postcard or back of an envelope. My winning envelope was picked out of a perspex bubble by Tony Blackburn, and I won a selection of Dads Army items, including a helmet from the show. And an Action Man with swivel eyes that prompted Noel to say, “Hope you have a brother.”