Curious British Telly

Society has been bombarded with adverts ever since the first marketing guru climbed out of the swamp and tried flogging cheap holidays to trilobites. A rather whimsical take on the history of advertising, perhaps, but the fact remains that advertising has assiduously worked its way into every space where humans dare tread. And the rise of the internet means we’re now targeted more frequently and with a disturbingly tailored precision. The result of having this consumerist dream regularly rammed down our throat is that it’s very easy to feel insecure. Adverts promise us nothing but undiluted happiness and the answers to all of life’s little problems. So, why wouldn’t we hang on their every word? Well, perhaps the answer lies in Andrew Marshall and David Renwick’s excellent 1993 comedy If You See God, Tell Him.

Godfrey Spry (Richard Briers) hasn’t had much luck recently. Whilst queuing up to get in the Post Office, he’s the unfortunate recipient of a wheelbarrow full of bricks falling on his head. Godfrey, somehow, survives. But the doctor warns he’s likely to suffer from ongoing mental abnormalities and a reduced concentration span. For Godfrey, however, it’s the beginning of a voyage of intellectual discovery. He may struggle to focus his attention for longer than 30 seconds, but this means he’s the perfect recipient for absorbing the spiel of advertising executives. And this is how Godfrey’s life will now be steered. Gleemy washing up liquid, for example, claims its tangy pineapple fragrance will leave your plates cleaner than ever before. A claim Godfrey puts to the test by buying a crateload and filling his kitchen full of suds.

Life takes another difficult turn for Godfrey three days after he leaves the hospital. Test driving a new car along a cliff, to see if it really can go from 0 – 60 in five seconds, he’s involved in a horrific crash which leaves him maimed for life. Matters can, and indeed do, get even worse for Godfrey when he heads to Hamburg for a relaxing break with his wife Josie (Barbara Grant). The holiday begins as a minor success but ends with Josie being stoned to death by rampaging football hooligans.

Once home from his disastrous trip to the continent, Godfrey sells his house in order to pay two month’s rent in advance for a luxury penthouse in a converted prison. Whilst here, he manages to furnish his merchant banker neighbours first with trading advice that makes them a packet and, then, tips which lose them millions and result in their suicides. All of this insider information is, of course, nothing more than regurgitated advertising slogans. With no money left, Godfrey is evicted from his apartment and moves in with his nephew Gordon (Adrian Edmondson) and his wife Muriel (Imelda Staunton). Gordon already has his hands full as a busy dentist and is seemingly always caught up in the bureaucracy and foibles of authority; the presence of Godfrey is the last thing that he needs. And it's at Gordon and Muriel’s house that Godfrey will launch his most ambitious and disastrous exploits.

Believing that he needs to find love, Gordon at first belittles and alienates an old flame before arranging a wedding where he hopes to marry a last-minute bride – perhaps the prostitute he meets in a hotel. Loneliness strikes again for Gordon at Christmas, but he manages to combat this by positioning himself as a Fagin-like figure for a gang of children at the local shopping centre - a move which inexplicably leads to a series of race riots. Encouraged by the promise of vibrant employment prospects, Gordon decides that he needs to find a job. Failure in this pursuit results in him taking advantage of exciting government schemes to set up the Gordon Spry Organization, an enterprise which will result in catastrophic and grisly consequences.

David Renwick and Andrew Marshall had previously collaborated on a number of successful television projects including End of Part One, Whoops Apocalypse and Hot Metal, so expectations were high when If You See God, Tell Him arrived on BBC1 in November 1993. With its four episodes running to 40 minutes each, If You See God, Tell Him was clearly positioned as a comedy drama rather than a sitcom, although Kate Battersby of The Daily Telegraph described it perfectly as “a sort of sitcom on acid”.

Its late timeslot, however, coupled with the public’s befuddlement over the content and a couple of controversies (more on them later) meant that this comedy drama struggled to make the impact its creators were aiming for. Only one episode, as part of a David Renwick evening on BBC4 in 2007, has ever been repeated and explains why the series – whose title is based on the 1980s British Gas advertising slogan “If You See Sid, Tell Him” – is remembered by so few. However, it did receive a DVD release in 2008 and this means I can take a closer look at the series.

Ask anyone who has seen If You See God, Tell Him to describe it in one word and it will be a miracle if anyone fails to pluck “dark” from the air. And it is dark. Not quite Chris Morris in his 1990s pomp dark, but it certainly trumps the darker side of David Renwick’s other 90s masterpiece One Foot in the Grave. And this darkness is always delivered with an impeccable sense of comedy.

The trio of unfortunate events (mental impairment, disability and spousal bereavement) which initially hit Godfrey may seem horrific, but Renwick and Marshall manage to contort them into unimaginable hilarity. In true Looney Tunes style, Godfrey’s umbrella is the only protection offered to him against the gravitational pull of a falling wheelbarrow. His horrific car crash, meanwhile, has the edge taken off it when the revelation comes that he was trying to emulate an aspirational car advert. And perhaps the most difficult moment to stifle your laughter arrives when Godfrey describes his and his wife’s trip to Hamburg: “We had a splendid two weeks away from it all. Marred only by our final evening at the hotel when she popped out for a packet of cough sweets and was stoned to death by a mob of drunken soccer fans”. If you can find a more sublime use of the word marred then please get in touch. Anyway, this is how If You See God, Tell Him sets out its comedy stall, so proceed cautiously from this point onwards if you prefer your comedy more latte than americano.

The reason If You See God, Tell Him hangs so beautifully together is down to the wonderful talent involved all throughout the series. Renwick and Marshall, naturally, must get top praise for the highly imaginative and creative framework they have built. Advertising is an invasive art and If You See God, Tell Him acts as a forensic and disturbing analysis of its malevolent influence. And this essay is beautifully detailed with a multitude of spoof adverts which are painstakingly accurate; the Frank Hexton’s Double Barrel Australian lager advert in the first episode is meticulous in its authenticity.

Against this backdrop of manipulative advertising are the characters. Godfrey is the victim of the piece, but his geniality knows no bounds and this is only magnified by Briers’ innate and all conquering jolliness. Godfrey’s sugar-coated veneer cracks just once; this sniff of pathos emerges when, with his employment prospects looking grim, he sadly admits “people don’t want a cripple” to Muriel. It’s as far removed from Tom Good as you could possibly imagine.

Much closer to Godfrey, although occupying a different universe in terms of mental acuity, are Gordon and Muriel. Positioned as the calm to Godfrey’s chaos, they bring a peculiar brand of domestic bliss to the series. In many ways they’re drawn from the same lines as Victor and Margaret Meldrew. This is most demonstrably obvious in Gordon, a man seated as the classic ‘sane voice in a mad world’ character – see the scene in episode two where an insurance claims auditor is giving Gordon’s concertinaed car a visual inspection and asks Gordon to clarify the damage. Muriel, meanwhile, is experiencing maternal pangs now their son has fled the nest. Cleverly, the opportunity to look after Gordon allows the series to counter its darker moments with tenderness and warmth.

The denouement for these characters, in keeping with the tone of the piece, is decidedly bleak. There are no lessons learned for our protagonists. No skipping towards a sunset as the opening bars of Lovely Day by Bill Withers begin to chime. Instead, for the viewer, there’s a realisation that all the characters (and indeed themselves) have an unsettling future ahead. Godfrey, now in prison - thanks to… actually, I won’t spoil it for you – has his television set confiscated and, surely, this means his voyage of intellectual discovery is over. But no. Even without a constant supply of adverts, the wiring of his imagination has been permanently soldered into a world of unachievable aspiration.

And, as Godfrey rises up forlornly from his wheelchair and walks out of his cell straight into an advert for Old Vienna chocolate thins, it’s clear he’s been completely indoctrinated. A state of affairs underlined by the final shot of Godfrey staring contentedly at the stark coldness of his cell door. But this may not be the most troubling part of the series’ finale. Just before Godfrey’s departure from reality, Gordon finds himself involuntarily repeating the slogan for a pair of luxury tights when Muriel ladders her own. Is this a sign we’re all destined, regardless of our mental strength, to become zombified parrots, stumbling through life under the control and influence of advertising executives and false dreams? Or is Gordon, who appears to be continually tested by the madness of the modern world, already teetering on the edge of his sanity? Either way, it’s a grim outlook for all of us.

The legacy left behind by If You See God, Tell Him is an intriguing one. At the time it was mostly remembered for complaints about a scene where children play football with a dead duck – complaints which were not upheld by the Broadcasting Standards Council – and the fact episode three was postponed by a week. This postponement was, in fact, down to the fact it involved children and a shopping centre in the week the James Bulger murder trial was reaching its conclusion.

But If You See God, Tell Him is far too three dimensional to rely on shocks to see it over the finish line (and the postponement was simply down to timing and a kneejerk reaction by the BBC). Instead, it’s an extraordinary piece of television with a level of incision which is both daring and prescient. And to strengthen this point, I’ll leave you with Godfrey’s disturbingly accurate predictions for the 21st century, “A century that will almost certainly be filled with more civil wars, famine, ecological disasters and hideous global catastrophes than mankind has ever known”

This article originally appeared in issue four of the Curious British Telly fanzine.

If there’s one thing which strikes fear into the heart of an audience, it’s local television. Blighted by budgets which make shoestrings look positively affluent, local television channels spend their time wading through treacle-like amateurishness and technological limitations. But there must surely be something intriguing within this package of mediocrity for the readers of Curious British Telly. And there is: Greenwich Cablevision.

Britain’s first local television channel came about, in part, thanks to the appalling television reception on offer in Greenwich in the 1960s. Despite being located only five miles from London’s main television transmitter in Crystal Palace, Greenwich was blighted by geography. In between Crystal Palace and Greenwich are the elevated plains of Shooters Hill – one of London’s highest points – which disrupted the television signal. Greenwich Cablevision, however, had a solution. By installing an aerial on a high-rise building, Greenwich Cablevision could capture the signal from Crystal Palace and pipe it into a cable network supplying Greenwich homes.

An unnamed Greenwich Cablevision presenter

The residents of Greenwich finally had a decent television picture, but Greenwich Cablevision – led by managing director Maurice Townsend – wanted to offer even more. As luck would have it, Christopher Chataway – the Minister for Posts and Telecommunication – had announced he was willing to licence six local television channels. The stipulations were brief and simple: programmes were to be geared towards local residents, no old movies were to be shown and there was to be no advertising or sponsorship. The closing date for applications was set as the 1st June 1972 and, little over a month later, on 3rd July 1972, Greenwich Cablevision was launched in Woolwich Town Hall by Sir John Eden.

The Greenwich Cablevision service was now carrying six channels: BBC1, BBC2, ITV (Thames), ITV (Anglia), ITV (Southern) and their self-titled channel. Not bad for 15 pence a week. But what exactly could the service’s 13,000 viewers expect to find on their homegrown channel? Well, the team at Greenwich Cablevision’s headquarters – based in Plumstead’s High Street – were open to almost anything. Maurice Townsend, with a twinkle in his eye, told Television Mail in February 1972 the service would be akin to a night down the pub: “You can do what you like, but if you drink meths you will be thrown out.”

At work in the Greenwich Cablevision studio

The channel debuted with Cabletown, an introductory affair which outlined Cablevision’s service and lasted for 40 minutes. Going forwards, Greenwich Cablevision would carry around an hour’s worth of programming every evening. Local matters were at the heart of the channel; its earliest weekday features focused on local news, council events and the very first week included a feature on the local hydrofoil service. Weekends were more entertainment based with programmes such as the nostalgia show Before Your Time, programming for children and an arts programme on offer.

Greenwich Cablevision’s schedule, as time went on, ventured down increasingly innovative avenues. News programmes entirely in Hindustani reflected the diversity of the local community, and global matters were covered when a local affairs programme visited a North Vietnam public meeting in March 1973. Ravensbourne College produced a Christmas musical for the station in December 1972 and a collection of Greenwich teenagers brought Fridaynite to the screen, a programme which promised to liven up existing television shows such as Monty Python. And there was also room for religion, with clerical matters being covered by Sunday Magazine and Godspot.

Blackheath poet Molly Monckton reading her poem
'Ode to Blackheath' on Greenwich Cablevision

Creativity may have been abundant in the Greenwich Cablevision schedules, but the channel was struggling financially. Christopher Chataway’s experiment with local television had been set to run to 1976 and, as such, meant several years without any advertising income. It was a state of affairs which would prove to be unsustainable for Greenwich Cablevision. Maurice Townsend was unable to justify the £30,000 a year running costs and the station’s final transmission came on 29th December 1974. Townsend was adamant, however, that Greenwich Cablevision had demonstrated a demand for local television. Rather than cluttering the schedules with re-runs of I Love Lucy, Townsend argued it was more progressive for television to provide local communities with a platform. But it was critical that these ventures were allowed to generate income to secure a future.

Out of the five community stations which were part of Chataway’s experiment – Greenwich Cablevision, Sheffield Cablevision, The Bristol Channel, Swindon Viewpoint and Wellingborough Cablevision – only Swindon Viewpoint succeeded in broadcasting for the rest of the 1970s. But this was not the end of local broadcasting in Greenwich. Maurice Townsend ensured that Greenwich Cablevision retained their Home Office broadcasting licence and turned the facility over to the community. The channel’s budget was slashed to just £3,000 a year, but it would allow local groups such as The Greenwich Television Society to continue producing programmes. And, in May 1981, Greenwich AM was launched as British television’s first regular breakfast service.

The Greenwich Cablevision service would morph into Greenwich Cablescene in the mid-1980s, where it would again take the initiative by pursuing the subscription TV model. The service’s new lineup would offer channels such as Sky Channel, Screen Sport, Music Box and The Children’s Channel as a basic package for £8 a month. Local broadcasting in Greenwich had, by this point, ceased due to dated equipment and a lack of funds, but its rich, innovative history would secure it a notable footnote in the history of British broadcasting.

Footage of Greenwich Cablevision has mostly been lost to the Greenwich Refuse Service, but some footage is available on the BBC’s website.

This article originally appeared in issue five of the Curious British Telly fanzine.

It’s very rare you’ll catch me writing about a television show I’ve never seen a single second of. For me, perhaps due to my lack of literary grace, I tend to focus on collecting solid facts and information together – that’s my USP. And, without footage of a programme, it’s difficult for me to paint a picture of what it truly was. However, it’s not a rule which is entirely set in stone. Just occasionally, I stumble across a television series which, for a myriad of reasons, is so irresistibly unique and obscure I have to investigate it. Even if any video evidence of it appears to have disappeared long, long ago. And a programme which falls perfectly into this narrow bracket is Mag is Mog.

On the 30th January 1982, if you had tuned into BBC1 at 9.05am you would have been confronted with Swim, a series fronted by Andrew Harvey which looked at swimming techniques (that week it was the front crawl). But, if you happened to be tuning into BBC One Scotland, you would have discovered something very different. And not just because swimming was off the agenda. Instead, Scottish viewers were presented with Mag is Mog. It may, from the publicity shot above, appear to be a standard children’s programme of the era. But it differed wildly from the majority of programming which had gone before it. And this is because all of those on the screeen were speaking Gaelic.

The UK is a country dominated by one single language: English. But it’s not the only language to emerge from the lips of our proud inhabitants; one of these is the niche language known as Scottish Gaelic. The 2011 census revealed that just over 1% of the Scottish population considered themselves Gaelic speakers. Accordingly, making it the sole language of a children’s TV show – in an era of, initially, only three channels – is a brave and ambitious move. Unfortunately, Mag is Mog appears to be completely missing from the BBC archives, so experiencing this burst of Gaelic creativity firsthand is impossible. Nonetheless, by piecing together press articles and, rather fortuitously, tracking down one of the main puppeteers, I can take a closer look at Mag is Mog.

The titular characters of Mag is Mog are, respectively, a magpie and a cat. Operated by puppeteers Ivy and Don Smart, Mag and Mog are joined in the Glasgow studio by Maggie Cunningham who, when she’s not on the television, is a teacher in Wester Ross. Saturday morning television is almost primarily geared towards variety and Mag is Mog holds a strong hand in this respect.

Alongside storylines created for Mag and Mog by Finlay J. MacDonald, there's also time allotted to Grannie Strang, a puppet who, each week, reads a story from the Red Book of Clan Strang. But it’s not just puppets who will be embarking on narratives in Mag is Mog. The first series introduces a Gaelic soap opera which follows the fortunes of Archie ‘Lectric McKay and his family on the Isle of Skye. Finally, music comes to the fore with a number of performances; acts appearing include Aneka – a former gold medallist at Gaelic arts festival The Mòd – Silly Wizard, City Limits and Anne Sinclair.

Although the paperwork surrounding Mag is Mog’s history is scarce – BBC Scotland were unable to offer any information when I contacted them – it appears that four series were produced between 1982 - 86. The series was never networked across the UK, so it’s a bona-fide regional oddity of British television. It was not, however, the first Gaelic production for children. Cuir Car had begun broadcasting in 1977 and 1981 had seen BBC Scotland debut Bzzz in the same slot that Mag is Mog would go on to occupy.

And Bzzz is where Ivy and Don Smart became involved. Luckily, I was able to track Ivy Smart down to learn a little more. As the owners of the Black Box Theatre, they had been contacted by the BBC to create a giant bee puppet for the series. However, the BBC were planning for non-puppeteers to operate the puppet. Equity, having got wind of this, stepped in and insisted that this position was filled by puppeteers; this is how Ivy and Don began working at the BBC. Bzzz only ran for one series, but thanks to the funds made available for Gaelic programming, BBC Scotland were keen to continue with a similar format. And, thus, Mag is Mog, was born.

It's important to point out that Ivy and her husband did not speak Gaelic, so the voices for Mag and Mog were provided, respectively, by Rhoda MacLeod and Simon McKenzie. As you would expect, the language barriers provided a few issues for Ivy and Don as Gaelic was the dominant language in the studio, but luckily they were able to see the funny side of this. Even if, as Ivy recalls, this resulted in the Smarts being left stranded under their operating desk whilst the rest of the crew decided, in Gaelic, to head off for a tea-break. Speaking to Ivy also revealed some interesting insights into the content of the series as well. A mixture of both rod puppets and marionettes featured throughout the series and, tantalisingly, there was a puppet serial set in space, a move to capitalise on the sci-fi boom of the early 1980s.

As with all productions that are ‘missing believed wiped’ it’s difficult to fully get a grip on Mag is Mog, but it’s fascinating to learn a little more about it. The language employed in the series would prove to be a humungous hurdle for most people reading this article, but at the very least it would be a visually intriguing spectacle. The large forms of Mag and Mog coupled with the fairy tales of Granny Strang’s red book and a Gaelic space opera are just crying out to be examined again.

More crucially, however, there’s the celebration of the Gaelic culture. The language had barely featured in the schedules by this point and it would not be until 1999 that the first dedicated Gaelic channel – TeleG – was launched, and even then it only aired for an hour a day. The immediate interest is clearly limited, but keeping these branches of language and culture alive is important. And, thanks to shows such as Mag is Mog, Gaelic was able to maintain enough of a presence in television that BBC Alba launched in 2008. We may have little more than memories left of Mag is Mog, but it remains an important step in the history of British television.

Obviously, if you are reading this and suddenly remember that you’ve got an old video tape with even half an episode of Mag is Mog (or Bzzz) on then please get in touch!

This article originally featured in issue three of the Curious British Telly fanzine.

Don't worry, the Curious British Telly blog isn't going anywhere! However, I have decided to set up another avenue for its curious ways. Due to the general furore unfolding on Twitter at the moment, lots of people have been discussing various methods for keeping in touch and providing updates etc. I'm certainly not going to join Mastodon, but the Substack platform looks an interesting one. Essentially, it's an email newsletter and one where I'll be posting things about British television which are too short for this blog and too long for Twitter. I've never used it before, so God knows what will happen, but if you want to sign up for the newsletter then please head to https://curiousbritishtelly.substack.com/

It would be a foolish soul who argues against the importance of the pub in British society. Walk into any public house and you will be presented with every possible emotion and attitude which has ever been expressed in this fair island. In one corner you may find a couple of older gents arguing about the rules of dominoes. Another nook is almost certainly going to contain either a romance being made or broken over some dry-roasted nuts. And, last but not least, there will be lots of loud, drunken behaviour atop every square-inch of lager-stained floorboard. The pub is certainly a hotbed of hijinks, but does this translate into bona fide comedy? Let’s head for a quick half at The Prince of Denmark to find out.

Ronnie Corbett (Ronnie Corbett) has, after 10 long years, had enough of the insurance game. Subsequently, he’s decided to step swiftly sideways into the role of pub landlord at The Prince of Denmark. At least that’s what he’s telling everyone. The actual truth is that his wife Laura (Rosemary Leach), after inheriting control of the pub, is the only name on the licence. It’s with good reason too as Laura has plenty of experience working in pubs. Ronnie, on the other hand, has only ever been one side of the bar, hence why he falls through the cellar doors several times on his first day. He seems to enjoy riding up and down on the bottle lift, though, so there’s hope for him yet.

Ronnie and Laura, thankfully, aren’t on their own and have the reliable Steve (David Warwick) alongside the busomy Polly (Penny Irving) to help man the bar. And on the opposite side of the bar there lives a varied and curious clientele. Blackburn (Tim Barrett) is a well-spoken alcoholic who is persistently in a rush for his train home, a situation he uses to justify a quick double scotch or eight with alarming regularity. Crossword Man (Michael Nightingale) forever has his head buried in a newspaper and speaks only in confounding crossword clues as he strives to fill every blank. Most worryingly for Ronnie, there’s also a regular appearance from local drunk and troublemaker Danny (Declan Mulholland), an Irishman with an irrational desire to rearrange Ronnie’s face.

As Ronnie is finding, running a pub isn’t as simple as he thought. It doesn’t help that he has an unwavering belief that he knows what’s best and that his personal prejudices are for the good of all society. The Prince of Denmark, subsequently, acts as a chaotic battlefield with Ronnie leading the charge. A raucous rugby team is given free rein to do what they want, as Ronnie is an old rugger boy, and almost destroy the pub. The billiards table is quickly converted into a makeshift birthing bed when a patron goes into labour, the baby being delivered by the 102-year-old Mr Bosworth. And, amidst all this, Ronnie has to pray he doesn’t upset of any of the bods from Chadwell, the brewery which owns the pub.

The Prince of Denmark was the final part in a trilogy of sitcoms, following on from No – That’s Me Over Here and Now Look Here, to star Ronnie Corbett and feature Barry Cryer and Graham Chapman on scripts. Whereas these previous efforts had run for multiple series, The Prince of Denmark was a shorter affair with just six episodes airing in 1974 at 7.40pm on Wednesdays. Publicity for the series was relatively light, with a sparsely detailed snippet in the Radio Times contributing the main push. As with so many forgotten sitcoms, although this one eventually sneaked out on DVD, The Prince of Denmark only received one airing before being retired from the schedules.

If you were offered a comedy trio of Ronnie Corbett, Graham Chapman and Barry Cryer then you would have little room for complaint. Corbett was a national treasure of the highest order, the offbeat genius of Chapman defied description and the stratospheric achievements of Cryer’s CV are remarkable in their width, depth and length. The BBC certainly didn’t complain and were keen to poach the No – That’s Me Over Here team from LWT for Now Look Here in 1971. The latter of these two series ended in March 1973 and, little over a year later, it was time for The Prince of Denmark to open its doors.

Corbett has top billing and it’s a deserved role in which he exhibits his comedy brilliance. To a certain degree, Corbett lived, quite amicably, in the shadows of Ronnie Barker’s acting achievements. But who wouldn’t when they’re up against Norman Stanley Fletcher and Arkwright? Nevertheless, Corbett was an assured and skilled performer – just watch his brilliantly choreographed dance to ‘Witch Queen of New Orleans’ in episode five for irrefutable proof. He’s more than just a comedy jig, though, and he wrings every last drop of arrogance, chauvinism and snobbery out of the character, a combination deployed most evidently when he sides with a ‘sophisticated’ rugby team over a ‘thuggish’ trio of football fans.

Being a Ronnie Corbett vehicle it’s inevitable the rest of the cast will pale in comparison to his talents. But they all put in strong shifts which are the epitome of character comedy, Rosemary Leach is given the most to do and, if she doesn’t get the pick of the lines, has plenty of opportunity to prick Corbett’s pompousness. There’s also a rather wonderful turn from Geoffrey Palmer in one episode who, at the time, was just hitting his comedic stride in the world of television. The ensemble make for an engaging team and they radiate a warmth comparable to the double scotches downed by Blackburn.

And there's plenty to laugh about in The Prince of Denmark. Cryer is the eternal gag machine and Chapman’s otherworldly skill for transforming the hilarious into the sublime is blatantly obvious. Ronnie’s lack of experience in the pub trade is ripe for struggles with delivery men and getting involved in unwinnable debates with patrons. But it’s the character’s foibles which are skewered most effectively: Ronnie hastily dons a makeshift Eton tie and Cambridge blazer to impress the head of the brewery and his horror at the sight of a homosexual couple in the bar is ignorance par excellence. Decades may have passed, but The Prince of Denmark remains, like any good night in the pub, a cracking lark.

But, not unlike an alcohol-fuelled trip to the pub, there’s little in the way of a strong plot. It feels heretical to level this accusation at Messrs Chapman and Cryer, but the taps run dry in this respect. The narrative remains untwisted and linear rather than travelling from point A off on a tangent to C and finally arriving at B. The final episode, where the managing director of Chadwell arrives for an inspection, has the potential for a fantastic farce but it suffers from a lack of action and the denouement is far too easy. Compared to contemporary sitcoms of the time such as Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads? and Fawlty Towers it’s light years behind in terms of story.

Unremarkable plots aside, and it’s very unfair to hold them up against genius level programmes, The Prince of Denmark is immense fun. Corbett’s performances are the central pillar of the series and there’s little more an audience (or scriptwriter) could want in a traditional sitcom lead. Laughter is also assured, just take a look at the initial meeting between Ronnie and Crossword Man which is probably the greatest Two Ronnies sketch which never was. The Prince of Denmark is unlikely to feature on permanent repeat in the nostalgia channel schedules and it would probably baffle the non-purists. But for the comedy nerds (i.e us) The Prince of Denmark is rich in fun and intrigue, so it’s more than deserving of your time.

This article originally appeared in issue three of the Curious British Telly fanzine.

By G. Neil Martin

Up until September 4th, 1992, if you had wanted a fictional TV cop show or police procedural that really got under the skin of the police, one that really inserted a scalpel under the gangrenous epidermis of the boys (and it was usually boys) in blue, you would have to have looked very hard.

There had been the original Law & Order - written by Tony Garnett and GF Newman - a short, 1978 series which followed a criminal, Jack Lynn, as he went through the criminal justice system, and was unsparing in its portrayal of the conduct of police, lawyers, and the villains themselves. But apart from this, most British TV police procedurals followed a pretty well-rehearsed template: crime commission, crime investigation, villain banged up after either a succession of car chases and fisticuffs (The Sweeney, The Professionals) or stately detection (Dixon Of Dock Green, Juliet Bravo).

But it was Between The Lines, the show executive produced by Garnett and written by JC Wilsher, that changed all this. Between The Lines revealed the dark underbelly of police corruption and spawned a mini-genre of cop shows - The Cops and, more recently, Line Of Duty, are two obvious examples where police corruption and misconduct is the focus and core of dramatic tension.

Between The Lines ran for three series from 1992 to 1994 on BBC1 and charted the rise and Icarus like defenestration of Superintendent Tony Clarke, a young, rakish, ambitious Met police detective strong-armed, following his promotion, into running the Complaints Investigations Bureau (CIB) of the Met, an internal affairs division established to investigate corruption in the police force.

Clarke, played by Neil Pearson, was a boyish exterior clad in Cecil Gee but the clean-shaven prettiness belied a dirty recognition of the seedy, greasy world in which he worked. He was not naive in the right circles but where it counted, he was as artless as a pickpocket, a weakness he fatally demonstrated when confronted by his brilliantly Machiavellian, Janus-faced, and brutally clipped boss, Chief Superintendent John Deakin (Tony Doyle). If the Met was a barrel of apples, Deakin was one of the most putrid fruits in it and it took Clarke a series to discover it. In fairness, that’s also how long it took us, following a tour de force of deflection and stunning dramatic misdirection.

Deakin was a phenomenal piece of work. “If you find you’re having us over backwards, Tony” he says in one character-establishing early exchange, “we’ll do your legs like a steamroller.” No-one saw Deakin’s true purpose and character coming. Prime Suspect and Line of Duty more or less assume that wrong-uns at the top are a given. In 1992 TV land, it was a novelty.

First broadcast at the fag-end of the Thatcher government, Between The Lines' first episode is winkingly titled “Private Enterprise” and opens with a black and white shot of Battersea to the straining strings of Hal Lindes theme tune, and a thin blue line which expands vertically to occupy most of the screen. A montage of thuggery and canoodling follows and, as the titles end, Lindes strings transform into a stunning, marching, pounding crescendo punctuated by a virtuoso Spanish guitar glissando.

The opening case involves a drug pusher who is also a snout for Mulberry Road police station, Clarke’s old station, and a suspicion that coppers in the station are bent. Clarke’s exasperation at his new role is evident in his response to his first case: “Infiltrate my own nick?!” And thus his baptism begins - the wrestling with the need to investigate his own colleagues while wishing to remain one of the boys.

Clarke loses these qualms as the series progresses and he delivers a series of dead-eyed, steely interrogations with resentful, defensive, prickly, suspect coppers. In his final interrogation in season two, he’s on the other side. Beaten, shot at, fingers broken, cigarette hanging from a cracked lip, and accused of firearms offences, entrapment and all sorts, he retorts from a busted face to a charge sheet of vices: “prove it”. Cue: Lindes’s strings. It is almost Grecian. It also echoes the words of another accused copper (Kendrick) interviewed by Clarke in episode 6 of season 1.

One of the reasons Between The Lines works supremely well - and there are a myriad reasons - is not just the charismatic lead, the scalpel-sharp scripts addressing the political and societal issues of the day, but also because of the tight-knit investigation team. A tacit, worldly, lank-haired Inspector Harry Naylor (Tom Georgeson), a man tightly wound with restrained rage, and Sergant Mo Connell (Siobahn Redmond), a methodical, conscientious copper and the first bisexual character to appear as a main player in a cop show. In episode 3, when Mo’s sexual status is still ambiguous, Clarke says to her “You know what it’s like for a red-blooded male”. She replies, “Can’t say I do, sir”.

At the end of series one, we discover that Deakin is as bad as the corrupt coppers his unit was set up to investigate. A successful 12-week run led to a second series in which Deakin re-appears, this time as a private security consultant undertaking business for all types of clients, shady and, well, almost exclusively shady. One such association, with Angela Berridge a civil servant with MI5-connections, drives the series and episode five begins with a clash between spook and plod where spook, naturally, wins. The first act is almost The Avengers-like in its surrealness.

Series two ends with an almost broken Clarke charged with a variety of offences and it is clear that his career is at an end. The third series sees him setting up his own private security company, taking offers of work from who else, but Deakin. The least successful of the series because it is untethered from its initial cause, it is missing that essential something that the first two series had. It is the detective show equivalent of the sitcom that goes abroad.

But the first two series, dripping with politics, sex, seediness, corruption, duplicity, friendship and bittersweet denouements - episodes rarely ended on a satisfyingly happy resolution - confirm Between The Lines' place as the greatest British cop show ever made.

Professor G Neil Martin is a psychologist and author.

Twitter: @thatneilmartin

This article originally appeared in issue one of the Curious British Telly fanzine.

Teletext is unique, when it comes to British television, in that it’s universally loved. In a world where people grouse about Test Card F being creepy and the lack of modern ‘pace’ in programmes which are four decades old, it’s difficult to find something we all agree on. But I’m yet to hear a single dissenting word regarding teletext. In fact, any mention of teletext will instantly lead to excitably barked cries of “PAGE 302 for the football headlines!”, “Bamboozler!”, “PRESS REVEAL!” and the biggest smiles you ever did see. But what did society think of Ceefax, the world’s first teletext service, when it launched in 1974? And why did it have such a small audience?

It was in October 1972 the BBC announced that their engineers at the Kingswood Warren research centre were developing a new system by the name of Ceefax. However, rather than taking the form of a television channel, this service would inhabit the same space as the Beeb’s existing channels. Viewers would be armed with a remote device that, with just the press of a button, could activate the Ceefax system and open a world of printed headlines and weather forecasts. For a viewer to receive Ceefax, they would need to ensure that their television set was installed with a special attachment costing around £100 (roughly £1400 in today’s money).

Television sets would receive Ceefax in much the same way they received programmes, from a television transmitter. But Ceefax signals would be slightly different. During the transmission of television programmes, there were around 50 “gaps” in transmission each second. The information received during these gaps would then be stored within the Ceefax ‘attachment’ and available for the viewer to access at their leisure. No release date, at this point, was in place, but “out of laboratory” tests were planned for 1973 and, all things going well, it was hoped that the system could be rolled out by 1974/75.

Development of Ceefax continued throughout 1973 and, by the following summer, around 5,000 hours of engineering test broadcasts had been completed. However, aside from some budding enthusiasts, who had managed to construct homemade receivers, the general public were yet to see Ceefax on their screens.

By now, the technical standards of Ceefax had been unified with those of IBA’s proposed Oracle system. Both teletext systems would operate thanks to four unused lines (out of 625) along the top of a television picture, which were hidden from viewers. These four lines would be used to receive digital pulses of information which could then be used to code the pages. It was an exciting prospect, but the country’s lack of exposure to the service meant the public mood was mixed. Peter Fiddick, writing in The Guardian, was intrigued by the potential of Ceefax and the possibilities it could open, but remained sceptical that Britain needed or even wanted the service.

Despite this cynicism - which at its most extreme was minimal, given that 1974 also saw the three-day week, IRA bombings and two general elections – Ceefax launched on September 23rd, 1974 as a two-year experimental service. The only snag was that barely anyone could receive it. Well, they could receive the Ceefax signals, but the teletext receivers required to decode these onscreen were not commercially available; by the start of 1975 it was estimated that only half a dozen or so engineers were able to receive the service. Outside of this, the only chance the public had to see Ceefax in action was at special demonstrations held at exhibitions and Broadcasting House.

But what was contained within the pages of these early broadcasts? Well, for those who could see it, there were 24 pages on offer which covered news headlines, sports coverage, weather forecasts and travel updates. Evidence of these earliest Ceefax broadcasts is, currently, non-existent but there’s a small chance it does exist.

The Philips VCR home recording format had been launched in 1972 and, much like VHS and Betamax after it, would record teletext signals alongside any broadcasts. Recordings this old, however, are rare, although not unheard of. The oldest example of Ceefax to be preserved in this way comes from August 1975 (see https://teletextarchaeologist.org/) and provides a fascinating look into not just the service, but a precise moment in world history with reports on IRA bombings, the results of the world rowing championships and news coming in that army units were being placed on alert in the politically unstable Portugal.

A year on from its launch, Ceefax – which now boasted 50 pages – remained a niche experience. Its audience still consisted of a handful of engineers who were lucky enough to have the correct equipment to decode the signals. But an appetite for this new frontier of information was slowly emerging; for example, the November 1975 edition of Wireless World featured the first part of a ‘how to build your own teletext decoder’ guide.

By 1976, around 10 companies were developing commercial teletext decoders and ITT were trialling the production of television sets with a built-in decoder. Teletext in the UK was given a further boost in the arm, in November 1976, when the Home Office extended the life of its trial to the end of the decade. Four years later, progress had advanced to a point where there 80,000 television sets capable of displaying teletext. The output of Ceefax had also expanded, with 200 pages available across the BBC1 and BBC2 services.

Ceefax would run for just under 40 years, finally going off the airwaves in 2012 when Britain’s analogue television transmissions were switched off. But even now, 10 years later, in an age where we are bombarded with instant information, the simplicity of Ceefax is sorely missed. Sure, if you showed it to one of those young people and asked what they thought, their response would likely be a snort of derision. Thankfully, we don’t care what they and their abundance of collagen think.

Ceefax may have had a very, very slow start – the editors in those earliest days must have thought they were on a hiding to nothing – but this perseverance paid off and resulted in a service which was rightfully considered a national treasure.

This article originally appeared in issue six of the Curious British Telly fanzine

It's hard to believe that next year marks the twentieth anniversary of Bob Monkhouse's death. For decade upon decade, he was a resolute fixture in the schedules, and it almost feels as if he's still with us. In fact, if he were to pop up fronting a new quiz show tomorrow, no one would bat an eyelid. Such was his engaging warmth and expertly honed wit, it's far from hyperbole to describe him as an absolute legend of British television. Oddly, he's never featured on Curious British Telly, a situation created mostly by him having two feet firmly planted in the mainstream. But today that changes as I look at The Flip Side.

The Flip Side was part of BBC2's long running anthology series Thirty-Minute Theatre (1965 - 1973) and, for many years, it was considered a victim of the BBC's infamous junking policy. However, it eventually emerged as a telerecording from Bob Monkhouse's vast, vast personal archive of television recordings. Having mostly known Monkhouse from his game show appearances - look, I wasn't born until the early 1980s - I was intrigued as to what old Bob would be like in an acting role, particularly a dramatic one. Luckily, the BFI hold a viewing copy of The Flip Side so I headed down there pronto.

Written by M. Charles Cohen - a prolific Canadian scriptwriter who would later go on to write for Roots - The Flip Side spends half an hour in the life of Jerry Janus (Bob Monkhouse), a disc-jockey broadcasting in the late night schedules of Canadian TV station CFMS. Jerry would appear to be on top of the world, but in between spinning the latest hits from Paul Anka, advertising Emulsa-fizz and taking calls on MS Feedback ("Where the viewer strikes back!), there's trouble at home for Jerry. This 'flip side' manifests itself in a series of phone conversations Jerry takes during the breaks from his soon to be ex-wife, Grace.

First off, we'll start with Monkhouse as, you know, he's the main focal point of interest. And his acting chops are surprisingly high-grade, far superior to what I was expecting. Okay, by 1966 Monkhouse had plenty of experience as an actual presenter to draw upon, but Jerry Janus is a fully fleshed character whose flaws and wounds need to be exposed to the world. Monkhouse barely misses a beat in capturing this, and he manages to maintain an authentic Transatlantic accent (complete with slickly inauthentic charm) throughout with ease.

Jerry's gleaming smile does, however, collapse under the weight of its own sheen whenever he picks up his domestic row with Grace. Why, he demands, is she leaving him? Has she found another man? No, she hasn't, it's much more complex than infidelity. Instead, it's Jerry's lack of integrity, a moral catastrophe hoisted on him by the devil's teat of CFMS, who want him to peddle any old rubbish (as well as a generous side helping of anti-communist propaganda) to the masses. Sure, Jerry argues, he's had to make compromises, but "that's the way the linoleum curls" if you want to make something of yourself.

It's an intriguing portrait of integrity and the way in which moral bankruptcy is, unfortunately, one of the surest ways to make a buck in, well, any industry where throats are available to cut. Cohen welds this nicely onto the old adage of the show must go on, evidenced repeatedly by Jerry segueing from heated arguments with his wife to effortlessly taking calls from viewers who want to talk politics, gush over their love for Jerry, or in the case of a persistent caller, be so critical of Jerry/CFMS that they read out a spoof advert for Slice-O, a razor perfect for slitting throats - the one time that Jerry's million dollar smile cracks on air.

Despite wanting to fight for his marriage, the success of being a big time player - even though he's found himself shoved into a late night slot - trumps the emotional richness of a genuine human relationship. Jerry briefly loses his footing when he realises this and, for a few moments, CFMS fails to successfully come back from a break. However, a quick call from the head of the station resets Jerry's immoral compass and, indeed, the show does go on once more.

The whole script is a wonderful satire of commercial television, perhaps a thinly veiled dig at the still fledgling ITV network, who were, at the time, prone to heavy criticism for being downmarket. Kudos, too, must go to director Gareth Davies and producer Harry Moore who conjure up a sublime recreation of a television landscape infested with harmonious jingles and incredibly kitsch adverts which indelibly mark this as a product of the era. Truly, this is a curio for anyone who has ever shown a passing interest in the history of British television.

By Jon Dear

The last couple of years have been rather tough, haven’t they? Starved of a functioning government and with Covid and Brexit stalking the land like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse after Tory cutbacks, plenty of people spent the long weeks of isolation in front of the telly. But the early 2020s don’t have a monopoly on bad times producing great stories. November-December 1972 produced some of the best regarded and well-remembered television, particularly in the field of ghost stories, and as we shall see, a lot of shit went down in 1972 as Britain had an identity crisis, went to war with a European neighbour over fish and there was a narcissistic liar in the White House. Hopefully we will never see these times again.

Ghost stories are older than literature itself and like most ancient tales they often take the form of reaffirming social norms and boundaries and then presenting an example of the consequences of transgression. In pre-Christian winter festivals like Samhain, the end of agricultural year and the death of much flora is associated with the remembrance of ancestors followed by the rebirth of the sun and the land. As we move forward through history, tales of the weird and the spiritual remain as moral guides from a time when life was seen as a largely transitory phase but still midwinter was associated with the dead. And those tales progressed from oral to written. And much later from radio to television. Always domestic, always communal.

Britain in 1972, like now, had lost an understanding of itself, deeply divided by industrial strife, January saw the first of the miners’ strikes of the type that would dog Ted Heath’s government. The Longford Report’s risible moralising on pornography couldn’t help branching out into ‘values’, largely because it’s nigh on impossible to reach consensus on morality. And this is the same year the first Pride march was held to the sound of much pearl clutching. The UK found itself at loggerheads with its European neighbours, ranging from the farcical – as Britain went to war with Iceland over cod quotas – to the tragic – as the Bloody Sunday massacre became the lowest of low points in the history of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic requesting that UN troops be sent in to keep the peace. Still, at least Rangers won the European Cup Winner’s Cup, and were subsequently banned from the competition as the fans celebrated their victory by smashing up Barcelona.

Overseas things weren’t much better, the bitterly fought US Presidential election became merely a prelude to the Watergate scandal while the last (to date) trip to the Moon took place in the December as the great post war technological dream of the 60s died. The Olympics in Munich ended in tragedy and diplomatic fall out when eight members of terrorist group Black September took 11 members of the Israeli team hostage. After a botched rescue attempt all the hostages were killed along with five of the terrorists and one local policemen. And the expulsion of Indians living in Uganda by Idi Amin had direct consequences for Britain. Most of the refugees had UK passports and headed there accordingly, which created social tensions.

As for the telly, things got Chrismassy as early as 5th November with producer Innes Lloyd’s anthology series Dead of Night, seven modern day stories that despite Lloyd’s assertions there was nothing gothic about the series, featured repressed trauma, fraught relationships and themes of revenge and tragedy, in short, gothic as hell. It just wasn’t set in the 18th/19th century. Sadly, only three of the seven instalments survive.

The first episode, Don Taylor’s The Exorcism has less a Marxist subtext, more being beaten over the head with a copy of Das Capital until you die… of starvation text. Two rich couples have Christmas in one of their second homes, an old cottage haunted by a woman who starved to death with her children after her husband had been hanged for poaching. As the night wears on the cottage becomes cut off from the rest of the world, the food turns to ashes and the wine to blood. Possession and death soon follow. The good intentions of the protagonists – they don’t see why they can’t be socialists and wealthy – are not a defence. While people are starving, they cannot justify their bounty under her roof.

A Woman Sobbing by John Bowen, a man who wrote one of the pivotal tv folk horror pieces, Robin Redbreast (1970), tells the story of a suburban housewife driven mad by the sound of a woman crying in the attic. A sound that no one else can hear. This one owes a lot to Charlotte Perkins Gilbert’s The Yellow Wallpaper (1892) in its examination of the attitudes towards the mental health of women. The other surviving episode is Return Flight by Doctor Who maestro Robert Holmes. It’s about a widower commercial airline pilot who’s a bit too old for it to be worth the bother of training him to fly jumbo jets but a bit too young to have flown during World War Two. His life is in limbo as he works on short haul European flights. But he starts to hear and see war planes from the 40s, as hallucination and reality combine, he attempts to land his plane on a Second World War airstrip that’s not been there for 30 years. A more gentle, gradual episode that the others, it nevertheless features an utterly brutal ending.

The four lost episodes include Bedtime by Hugh Whitmore, who had previous form with the weird for adapting works by EF Benson and Robert Aickman. This story can be seen as a sister piece to A Woman Sobbing, an upwardly mobile couple moving into a house buy an antique bedframe, which turns out to be haunted. The woman becomes less and less willing to leave the bed and the man learns what it’s like to be cuckolded by furniture. The refrain PLU (People Like Us) is used throughout, meaning young professionals, richer than their parents, disdainful of the more traditional working classes, they are the vanguard of a new class war and Whitmore shows them how they need to be careful of what they put their faith in. Death Cancels All Debts by Peter Draper, in which a man interviews a famous writer who it turns out is haunted by the ghost of his dead, male lover. The writer attempts to prolong the relationship through the themes of his work but now longs simply to die and be reunited.

There’s Smith by Dorothy Allison, the only woman to write for Dead of Night, this concerns a couple writing about serial killers of woman. For their piece on Brides in the Bath murder Joseph Smith they decide, for some reason, that the required verisimilitude will be achieved by spending the night in Alton Towers’ Chamber of Horrors alongside Smith’s waxwork. Let’s hope it doesn’t possess the man and kill the woman, eh? Finally, there’s Two in the Morning by Leo Lehmann, essentially an adaptation of Dostoevsky’s The Double (1846), a man failing at life starts to see his much more successful but exact double moving into his life and taking over. These stories concern a fear of being diminished, of turning your back too readily on things that got you where you are and thinking you can be the exception to the rule. All of these themes were being played out at the national level.

So that takes us to 14th December. Fast forward to Christmas Eve and the second of Lawrence Gordon Clark’s seminal Ghost Stories for Christmas, A Warning to the Curious. For many, this is the best one. Adapted from the story in MR James’s final collection of ghost stories, Clarke alters the focus by making the doomed Paxton (Peter Vaughn) both working class and recently unemployed at the time of the Great Depression, something that will be a touch point for Britain in 1972.

He follows his dream of archaeology and finding the lost Anglo-Saxon crown of East Anglia not as a passionate hobby but as the final throw of the dice for a man without a future. He’s treated with disdain by the boots at the hotel he stays at because if there’s one thing working class people love it’s other working-class people failing in attempts to better themselves. As an amateur archaeologist, as a working-class person operating in a middle-class space he is doomed and destroyed for his hubris. This feels like an adaptation that couldn’t have happened at another time, especially with the added detail that the ghost of William Ager will also pursue Dr. Black (Clive Swift) something that doesn’t happen in the original story.

For Christmas Day itself, we return to the producer and script editor of Dead of Night for a feature length tale from the King of Hauntology, Nigel Kneale with possibly his most famous non-Quatermass story, The Stone Tape. A story of British industrial decline, it begins with an R&D department of an electronics company moving into an old, renovated building to try and develop a new recording medium in an attempt to “beat the Japs”. One room is unfinished because the builders won’t go in there as it’s haunted by the ghost of a screaming woman. As the team begins to experience the phenomena, they realise the stone walls themselves are a recording/storage medium and begin to see £££!

Kneale has a gift for misanthropy and the central character of Peter (Michael Bryant) is the real villain of the piece as his monstrous treatment of his team, especially computer programmer Jill (Jane Asher) demonstrates. On the one hand this is a tale of hubris, arrogance and not listening to warnings as you chase your dreams no matter what the cost, on the other it’s an utterly chilling ghost story that breaks one of MR James’s central rules on the age of a ghost. The genuine malice that’s felt when you start to experience what the woman is screaming at. Something ancient and awful, a prehistoric, formless, unknowable terror.

To finish our Christmas viewing we have two Doctor Who stories, on 27th December there’s an omnibus repeat of The Sea Devils, which is a big deal as that would be your only Doctor Who repeat of the year, and the chance to watch a complete story rather than an episode of a serial. There’s no video, no recordings, no on demand viewing. This was a golden chance to catch up. A lovely little Christmas present!

Three days later Doctor Who’s tenth season would start with essentially, a panto. Much like Dorothy was transported to Oz, The Three Doctors sees the Doctor and his friends transported to a faraway kingdom where magic is real and a big villain lives in a castle and to top it all off, the Doctor’s previous incarnations are along for the ride! The story ends with the Doctor’s exile to Earth being lifted and he’s once again free to roam the universe. So, Doctor Who makes peace with its past and leaves the stagnant world of 1972 behind to forge new paths. And it’s worth nothing that Britain’s answer to industrial decline in 1972 was of course to have a referendum to join the European Common Market…

So why does any of this matter? Well, you may have picked up a certain amount of déjà vu running though this essay. We, in 2022 are haunted. A haunting, in a psychological sense, is that something is unresolved. In the 1990s things felt rather more celebratory and horrors, especially horrors about hauntings, were much rarer than they were in the 1970s. We are drawn to hauntings when we experience dissatisfaction with our present.

And the last year or two have been horrible for many but it’s not unprecedented. We’ve had a criminal in the White House before, we’ve had austerity measures and mutually destructive conflicts with Europe over fish. We’ve had influxes of refugees caused ultimately by our past actions in other countries. All these things are happening again and the culture we have represents a window through which we can look at our history and understand ourselves. Culture keeps us alive. Culture helps us process trauma and exorcise our hauntings.

Jon Dear is a writer and critic on television and film. He also hosts BERGCAST, a podcast on Nigel Kneale.

This article originally appeared in issue five of the Curious British Telly fanzine.

Although Christmas is still a few days away, I've already received an early present: an article of mine being published in the latest issue of Best of British. Following on from my debut in the March 2022 issue, the bods at Best of British towers have been kind enough to give me a couple of pages to detail the short history of Pay-TV - Britain's first pay television experiment which ran for a couple of years in the 1960s. If you're interested in taking a look, then just head to your local WHSmiths where it should be nestling on the shelves.

It's been a year and a half since I last looked at an episode of Let's Pretend and that's because not a single second of it has popped up anywhere. It's a continual source of frustration given that over 200 episodes were produced, but I guess there's worse things happening in the world (probably). Anyway, the good news is that Neil Miles, the intrepid tape archaeologist, has retrieved an episode from the clutches of a dusty old tape. It's an episode from the fourth series - titled The Milk Float and the Racing Car - which first aired in October 1984, although it appears this particular recording came from a mid-morning repeat in January 1985.

Appearing in The Milk Float and the Racing Car, the writer of which remains unknown due to a lack of available resources, are Let's Pretend stalwarts Chris Hazell, Michael Bray and Lesia Melnyk. Hazell, as ever, is on the musical side of things and taking up residence at the Let's Pretend piano (I wonder where that is now) whilst Bray and Melnyk take up the all-important roles as pretenders.

As the familiar strains of the Let's Pretend theme commence, the Let's Pretend caterpillar starts bobbing across the strain before it meets... a bottle of milk (red cap, for you all you dairy enthusiasts out there). Melnyk, who is operating the caterpillar, picks up the bottle and makes her way into the Let's Pretend house where she finds Hazell and Bray tinkling away on the piano. Spying the milk bottle in Melnyk's hand, the male pretenders ask her where her milk float is. This gentle ribbing leads into the trio watching a quick piece of footage of a milk float going about its round, a discussion then follows on why it needs to be slow and steady.

It's now time for the pretending to begin, and Melnyk gets to work by fashioning a milk float, in true imagination shattering fashion, out of a cardboard box she steps into. At this point, Hazell begins to craft a slow and steady melody on the piano, Melnyk soon joins him in singing the milk float song, "Milk float travels slowly, moving steadily along, slowly along". All this snail-paced action, however, is starting to irk Bray and, quite frankly, he's had enough. And that's why he announces he wants to be a racing car, a move marked by him racing around the playroom and singing, "I'm a racing car, I can go so far, I go very fast, nothing seems to last, it's over before you know it, I have gone!"

This rather convenient contrast in velocity choices sparks a lightbulb moment from Hazell: today's play will be the story of The Milk Float and the Racing Car. The Let's Pretend curtains raise and the play begins to unfold. With one toe daintily dipping itself into the story of the hare and the tortoise, the play finds a slow and steady milk float going up against a brash, flashy racing car. Both vehicles vie to give the superior tour experience to an elderly couple who fancy a day out. I won't provide any spoilers as, if you've got this far, you're probably going to watch it, but, suffice to say, both the milk float and the racing car emerge with their egos intact.

I'm biased, of course, as Let's Pretend holds such a special place in my heart, but The Milk Float and the Racing Car provides a charming slice of nostalgia. It's an unashamedly mid-1980s production on a tiny budget, but, once again, the programme's trademark grappling hook snares the imagination with ease, a footing it strengthens with engaging performances from the pretenders.

As ever, I'm on the hunt for more Let's Pretend episodes, so please get in touch if you're sitting on one!

Ephemeral television, as is its nature, comes and goes without causing much of a fuss. Indeed, it only takes a quick perusal of the Curious British Telly archives to understand just how much of our cultural output falls in between the cracks of our groaning, much put upon memories. But, as I've been saying for well over a decade, thanks to the written word and permanence (we hope) of the internet, these brief dalliances with broadcasting can be cemented into the digital consciousness. And that's why I'm cock a hoop to finally breathe life into a true forgotten oddity: Bradley.

Bradley (Paul Bradley) is a peculiar, but upbeat chat. How peculiar is he? Well, how about the fact that his bedroom (aka a hammock in front of some curtains) descends into his living room thanks to a remote control and his kitchen extends out of a wall at the press of a button? No? You want the oddness heightened? Okay, how does this sound: he's got a giant windmill and tractor in his tiny front garden for no discernible reason. Still not absurd enough? Well, don't worry, even this is topped by one final element of absolute curiosity. You see, Bradley lives with his reflection, but not like you or I do. Instead, his reflection Yeldard (Paul Bradley) is a freethinking individual, one who is determined to get Bradley to make something of himself.

Bradley's adventures, although not located in the realms of the avant-garde, are equally curious. Seemingly mundane on the surface, episodes can, for example, find Bradley heading out to get a haircut and a paintbrush, but accidentally becoming a hairdresser in a salon. Naturally, chaos ensues as Bradley's lack of experience leads to hair removal cream being mistaken for Brylcreem and cutting one gentleman's moustache off. And chaos is a recurring theme where Bradley is concerned, evidenced by his short dalliance as a clumsy waiter in a French restaurant and when Bradley's presence leads to three people getting their heads stuck in a set of railings.

Six episodes of Bradley were produced by Granada for Children's ITV, with the 25 minute episodes going out in 4.20pm slot over Spring 1989. Paul Bradley, along with Michael Fenton Stevens, wrote one of the episodes (Teacher for a Day which also starred Sheila Hancock) whilst the rest were written by Bernard Kelly and David Till. But how did the series come about? Luckily, I was able to get in touch with Paul Bradley to find out more about the series' origin:

"I'd done two shows with Granada: a children's sketch show directed by Tim Sullivan and produced by James Maw called Stop That Laughing at the Back and then an adult sketch show The Kate Robbins Show. The executive producer asked me to come up with an idea for a children's show. So, myself and Michael Fenton Stevens came up with the idea of an odd character who has a different adventure every week. The brief was sent to five young writers that the channel wanted to give a start to - one of whom was David Renwick who went on to write One Foot In The Grave"

Bradley is a strange little show, but rather than be tragically strange like that man at the bus stop shouting about otters, it's a charming brand of peculiarity. Yeldarb is perhaps the most pleasing foray into surrealism the series takes, one episode finds Yeldarb heading off on holiday and being replaced in the mirror by Jim (Peter MacQueen) and the final episode sees Yeldarb resigning in protest at Bradley's disastrous life. But there are plenty of other quirky moments such as Bradley getting changed by walking in and out of his wardrobe in seconds whilst the opening titles find a claymation Bradley bursting out of a newspaper and stumbling disastrously across a breakfast table.

Farce, of course, is an important part of comedy, and Bradley takes farce by the hand and runs headfirst into a particularly farcical wall. The fourth episode Bradley Wrecks a Casualty Ward takes this to extremes with the aforementioned head/railings debacle quickly followed by a disastrous trip to the casualty ward (which features Heap and Wall from Dizzy Heights) and ending with Bradley ejected out of a laundry chute in a runaway laundry bin. Another episode finds our protagonist blowing up a French bistro after lighting brandy drenched crepe suzettes before, in a cruel twist, Bradley wins a pair of tickets to said bistro.

But what of the man that the series is named after? Well, Bradley is a bumbling everyman with a quip for all occasions. And it's a persona which fits the mildly anarchic universe of Bradley perfectly. Much like the character of Nigel Bates in EastEnders, Bradley benefits from the comedic grace and affable charm of Paul Bradley. Carrying the majority of the narrative, he ensures that there's a jolly atmsosphere throughout and it's difficult to hold any grudges against the series. It was, as he explains, an exciting opportunity, but not necessarily the easiest job of his career:

"It was quite a responsibility to front the show but I didn’t interfere with any ideas the producer or director had. I left that to them and behaved as if it wasn’t my idea and that I was just an actor playing a part. We never clashed about style or anything. The director was young and I sometimes felt that he didn’t have the comedy chops. It is a very specific technique shooting comedy and perhaps someone with more experience would have shot it differently!

At the time, I was in a co-operative agency and the fee they negotiated wasn’t good. When I said to the director that we had a brilliant cast - including Sheila Hancock, a bear, the footballerMark Hughes, Sarah Lancashire, Lesley Nicol, Sheila Hancock, and Hetty Baynes - he said 'that’s because you asked for so little, we could afford them!' It was tough doing it, I was in almost every scene! But fun, and I was happy with the series"

Bradley is, as mentioned at the start of this article, a highly obscure programme of the era and, sure, it does have shortcomings such as plots tending to plod at times, but there's a gentle joy at the heart of the series (think Chucklevision without the conniving of Paul Chuckle). And, along with programmes such as News at Twelve and Erasmus Microman, it's further evidence that the Children's ITV schedules in the late 1980s were bubbling away with a creativity and quirkiness which marked them out as an entertaining alternative to Children's BBC. Bradley may be forgotten by most, but at least its curious ways have finally made it to the internet.

Around a year ago, I published an article about The Launch of The Children's Channel in 1984 and, in one of those wonderful this-is-why-I-started-this-website moments, it caught the attention of Charlie Bushell, who had worked as a runner on the channel in the late 1980s. Naturally, Charlie had plenty of insights of what it was like working for a channel which was still relatively young. Therefore, I decided to share his experiences and bring a little more backstory to the history of The Children's Channel.

Six Months at The Children's Channel in 1989

I was 17 and on a media YTS with a work placement for six months as a runner in 1989. I was very excited as it was my first experience of a TV studio.

I was lucky enough to be flown British Airways to Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Glasgow with the Children's Channel team and Mick Robertson (stood at the back of the crew pic) to film Roustabout in some local schools. I believe this was Trudi Dance's first big gig too as a female presenter. The Roustabout set was made of basic sprayed scaffolding and very dangerous (definitely wouldn't pass H&S now!)

Most of my days in the studio in London were spent working on the Steve and Danny Show, which was supposed to be filmed with a live audience but, in reality, a group of school kids were just brought in for half a day and filmed cheering and shouting answers. The studio was relatively small and half of it taken up with the set for Huva (the links puppet operated by Ronnie Le Drew). All the sets were handmade, mostly by the floor manager out of thin wood and paint. All very basic! Kids audience voices were recorded and then fed into a keyboard for me to hit 'Yes' or 'No' or 'Cheers' when Steve and Danny asked the 'audience' questions.

The atmosphere was very businesslike, but they had no time for people's personal issues. One young producer was having a hard time at home and they booted her out after about a week. Most of the crew were thirtysomethings. Although they were relatively young, there wasn't much of an element of fun - while on location in Glasgow, we were allocated a host from the cable station, who was to look after us and show us the sights and sounds of the night life. We went for a curry and the host excitedly told us about the cool clubs we could go to next - all paid for. She was aghast when the crew just wanted to go back to the hotel for an early night! I was gutted!

I remember Steve and Danny summoning me to their dressing room to collect some things, while I was making them drinks, and before I could go fetch the drinks they asked "Is this tea Quickbrew?/Is this coffee instant?" A friend of mine came to visit the set and he told me Mick put his arms on his shoulders and moved him aside in the gallery without saying a word! The Children's Channel seemed to be a stepping stone for most of the crew.

I think the atmosphere was summed up when Spike Milligan came in to promote something (can't remember what - I think he brought in some marionettes?) and the director kept asking him to promote other programmes and give sound bites he hadn't previously agreed to. He stormed off set in front of me and was swearing under his breath as he passed me in the gallery. They tried to get him back but he refused.

Before you read any further, please prepare yourself. A statement which can only be described as a bombshell of epic proportions is about to follow. And that jaw dropping revelation is thus: fans of Doctor Who are a curious bunch. It may come as a shock, but the truth is that spending your days dreaming about grappling with Zygons, heading off for a pint with Duggan and solving the puzzles of the Exillon city are niche aspirations.

To put a positive spin on such a state of affairs would be to point to the clear evidence of a fertile imagination but – to so called normal people – Whovians remain a peculiar crowd. And I can say this without prejudice as I’ve been a lifelong fan of the series since 1986. Little did I know, however, that as I was digesting Gallifrey’s finest for the first time in Trial of a Timelord, one of the most eccentric helpings of Doctor Who merchandise had recently been released. It was a book unlike any Doctor Who book before or since. And that book was Travel Without the Tardis.

It's unthinkable for anyone to claim to be a fan of Doctor Who and not know about the institution which is Target Books. For just over 20 years, Target put their printing presses into overdrive with novelisations of past Doctor Who serials. Starting in 1973 – with simultaneous releases of Doctor Who and the Crusaders/Daleks/Zarbi – Target published 165 Doctor Who books with authors including Terrance Dicks, Malcolm Hulke, Ian Marter, Eric Saward and Phillip Hinchcliffe amongst many others. And the Who fans gobbled them down with a ferocious appetite not usually seen outside convention canteens.

It’s unsurprising, really, as the majority of Target’s novelisations came either before the advent of home video recording or before commercial releases of the serials. Therefore, these paperbacks – emblazoned with the classic Target logo – represented the only way fans could relive or discover the Doctor’s classic adventures. But not all of Target’s Who releases were exclusively fiction. Titles such as The Doctor Who Quiz Book (1981) and The Making of Doctor Who (1976) are self-explanatory as to their contents, but the very title of Travel Without the Tardis is a confounding proposition all of its own.

I first started collecting Target books in the late 1980s – buying them mostly from market stalls and charity shops – but I didn’t get round to reading any of them for a few years as they were a bit intimidating for a six-year-old. Never, though, did I stumble across Travel Without the Tardis. I suspect it wasn’t a big seller and it wouldn’t be until 2015-ish that I was even aware of it. But it called to me in a way which the very best curiosities do.

Written by a pair of American fans – Jean Airey and Laurie Haldeman – it promised a textual jaunt around Britain on the search for filming locations from Doctor Who. This alone was an intriguing premise, but the denizens of Twitter told me it was immeasurably stranger. Something about Leeds Castle was frequently proffered as evidence of the book’s hilariously absurd nature, so it was time to take a look.

The first quarter of Travel Without the Tardis is squarely aimed at planning a trip to Britain from abroad – with a strong emphasis on those making a transatlantic journey. Collections of paragraphs dispense advice on selecting airlines, the best ways to travel around the UK and the (apparent) peculiarities of British money – the pound coin seems unusually baffling for Misses Airey and Haldeman. And, within reading a few pages, the book has set down its offbeat foundations.

Who references are regularly slipped in wherever possible, an example being when discussing free medical care in Britain: “Being zapped by a Zygon would qualify, but problems caused by drinking too much wine with Solon wouldn’t (unless you lost your head)” These asides are charming eccentricities and do much to mark the book out as an idiosyncratic work. The most entertaining part of this preparatory section is the guide to British terms. It’s here the reader is informed that when Brits say “widdershins” they mean “counterclockwise” – because, yeah, we’re always saying that – and, unbeknownst to me at least, shandy is an alien concept to Americans.

The remaining sections of the book are dedicated to traversing Britain on the trail of locations from Doctor Who. It starts with a selection of London tours, but it’s a somewhat perplexing guide. A visit to the Royal Albert Hall is detailed even though the book is keen to stress that it’s never featured in the series. Likewise, navigation to the British Museum and National Portrait Gallery is provided without any actual Who links. Maybe the authors needed to fill some space, maybe they were practicing their tourist guide skills.

Following this ‘An American’s Guide to London’ Airey and Haldeman start getting their teeth into solid location work. The next 70 pages take readers on a tour of the country stopping off at a myriad of locations including Aldbourne (The Daemons), East Hagbourne (The Android Invasion), Middlesex Polytechnic (Mawdryn Undead) and Land’s End (The Smugglers). It’s debatable as to whether each and every location had been visited by the authors – it would be a herculean effort for even a native to complete – but I don’t doubt that they had visited Britain.

Clearly, though, they had not visited Leeds Castle (The Androids of Tara) as they suggest getting a train to Leeds, Yorkshire as opposed to its actual location near Maidstone. It’s a mistake which causes much mirth amongst fans and one which serves up an egg for the face of Target’s editing team. Several pages are also dedicated to overseas locations – for the more affluent travellers – so trips are detailed for visits to Amsterdam (Arc of Infinity), Paris (City of Death), Lanzarote (Planet of Fire) and Seville (The Two Doctors). Closing the book is a checklist of items to pack and a bibliography of useful addresses and phone numbers for travellers.

My copy of Travel Without the Tardis cost me a cool £10 from Ebay – at some point, judging by the price scrawled on the front page, it had been available for 20p so a massive 4900% markup over the years – but it’s worth every penny. Much of the information is, 35 years on, inevitably dated but this imbues it with a certain charm. This is a Britain where pubs have restricted opening hours, phone boxes are crucial and British Rail is a behemoth of a monopoly. It’s also a world where the absence of smartphones means travel books are an absolute necessity. Now, of course, you could google “Doctor Who locations” and you'd have everything you need in a few seconds. For free.

I doubt Travel Without the Tardis was a big seller, but for a visiting Whovian in the 1980s it would prove highly useful. Charming and eccentric, it’s the embodiment of classic Who and a glorious, fading Polaroid of a Britain long since gone.

Much like the concept of ringing our friends on a landline for a chat, the TV closedown is another archaic reminder of a very different landscape where the rudimentary constraints of technology limited what was available to us. It was a world which, quite simply, went to bed when the evening’s programming finished.

This all started to change in the 1980s with LWT first pushing their closedown back to 2am in 1983 and then, in 1986, Yorkshire Television experimenting with 24-hour schedules. Before this, however, most channels went off the air around 12.30am.

The BBC would sign off in decidedly patriotic fashion by blasting out the national anthem as any remaining night owls shed a tear of unabashed pride. Meanwhile, many of the regional ITV networks followed a similar suit, often playing the music over a still of the Queen. There was also time, just before the closedown, for ITV regions to slip in a final scrap of programming. These were often peculiar, gloriously British and always low rent. An example which ticks all these boxes is Sit Up & Listen.

Launching on the 18th of August 1980, Sit Up & Listen was a Thames Television production which aired from Monday to Sunday. The episodes – which could only be picked up in the Thames/LWT region – went out just before the service closed down for the evening and lasted roughly three minutes. These canapés of late-night viewing were easily digestible thanks to their simplicity and ensured that late night viewers weren’t left scrambling for the Gaviscon in the wee hours.

Produced and directed by Margery Baker (who had been working for ITV since the dawn of the 1960s) Sit Up & Listen gave way to any high falutin gimmicks and, instead, simply invited personalities to read a personal selection of poetry and prose or, occasionally, share their thoughts. Each guest was allocated a week to make their contributions before making way for a revolving door of guests which included Anita Harris, Quentin Crisp, Brian Blessed, Delia Smith, Siân Phillips, Johnny Morris and dozens more. The series ran for large stretches of the year up until 1983, when it was replaced by Night Thoughts, a similar production but one with overt religious overtones.

I first discovered Sit Up & Listen whilst digging through YouTube to – hold on to your hats, ladies – investigate the finer points of LWT continuity. One such clip featured a still of the LWT Tower which soon segued into a curiously titled show called Sit Up & Listen. As the delicately plucked acoustic theme tune faded away, I was confronted by the welcoming sight of bearded national treasure Brian Blessed. But rather than bellow cartoonishly, Blessed was here to share a light night reading of a Walt Whitman poem from the comfort of an armchair in a set which redefined the concept of austerity. And, within mere minutes, he was gone.

Thankfully, several episodes of Sit Up & Listen have made their way on to YouTube, no doubt the result of countless video recorders being left to run after the evening’s film. These episodes find Siân Phillips reading the poetry of RS Thomas, writer Anthony Storr dispensing literary advice on behalf of Anthony Trollope and, most surreally, broadcaster Steve Race detailing his method for getting to sleep: imagine you’re a bumblebee exploring the inside of a tulip with, depending on your taste, either a Robert Redford or Anne Ford bumblebee curled up beside you. Unfortunately, the series of episodes featuring Delia Smith reciting the Scriptures haven’t made their way online yet, but I live in hope.

Despite their ephemeral nature, there’s something fascinating at the heart of Sit Up & Listen’s episodes. Hindsight, of course, shows us this was a very different era. Once television closed down for the evening, your options were limited – even in the metropolis that was 1980s London. Perhaps you could read a book, maybe flick the World Service on or, if you were particularly lucky, stick on one of those new-fangled Betamax tapes. Most likely, though, as the words of Sit Up & Listen were still ringing in your ears, you would slope off to bed. As such, the programme positions itself perfectly as a charming gesture from Thames. A bedtime story, of sorts, but one which delivers sage advice and wisdom on that curiosity known as humanity.

The result of today’s 24-hour society means something like Sit Up & Listen is virtually impossible to incorporate into our lives now, we’re much more likely to fall asleep at our laptop whilst watching YouTube videos at 3 in the morning. But Sit Up & Listen is out there – and if anyone reading has access to more then please get in touch – so it may be worth setting some episodes up for the occasional bedtime indulgence. It may just, even if only for a few minutes, make life feel wonderfully uncomplicated again.

If you have any editions of Sit Up & Listen nestling on old video tapes then please get in touch!

As a child, hearing the Why Don't You? theme tune meant two fantastic things: firstly, it was the school holidays and, secondly, that you were going to discover a whole new world of games, activities and crafts to get to grips with. Remember, this was in the days before YouTube and Fortnite (whatever that is), when television was the dominant source of information for children. Anyway, as we all know, the series was built around young presenters, all of whom had incredibly authentic regional accents. But what exactly was it like being a presenter on Why Don't You?

I always dreamed of becoming a presenter on Why Don't You? and, had this dream become reality, I would have known the answer. Alas, I was just too young to be one of presenters. And, for some reason, the BBC never decided to populate the series with a King's Lynn gang. Nonetheless, my curiosity surrounding the series (which featured Russell T Davies as producer) and its young, enthusiastic presenters (who included a young Ant McPartlin) persisted. Luckily, due to the phenomenal reach of Curious British Telly, I found that two Why Don't You? presenters followed me on Twitter.

Marie Rooney was part of the Bristol gang back in 1982 and Rachel Mainwaring represented the Cardiff gang a few years later in 1988. With their unique insights just a few DMs and emails away, I decided it was time to get ask a few questions.

How did you first get involved with Why Don't You? And how did it feel to get the job and be on television?

Marie: I wrote to the BBC Bristol offices and asked for an audition, I was invited and had one audition. I was excited about getting the job but was too young to really understand what it was going to mean. I enjoyed the process of recording the programme more than actually being on the telly box. I didn’t enjoy the attention from the kids at school when the programme aired, so it was a fabulous experience of why you would never want to be famous.

Rachel: Russell T Davies and the production team contacted my school (Bishop of Llandaff High School) and my drama teacher picked a few of us to ‘audition.’ The first meeting took place at school and was literally a chat with the team about ourselves. We all had to introduce ourselves and say something interesting. I have no memory of what I actually said but I know I was desperate to impress because I LOVED Why Don’t You? I was then called to the next round of auditions which involved going to the BBC studios in Llandaff. We were all given tasks to perform – mine was how to walk through a piece of paper (it involved lots of cutting and folding!) By some miracle, I landed the part. I was SO HAPPY.

The Cardiff Gang - 1988 - Rachel
pictured at the back, far right

How did the recording process work? Did it take place during term time?

Marie: We were given the script on a Sunday, rehearsed two evenings during the week and then a full day of recording on the Monday. I had permission from my school to miss the Mondays, which was great as I had double maths…!

Rachel: We filmed a lot of the outdoor scenes first, on a couple of freezing cold days in Margam Park. That’s where we first met the Why Don't You? sheep which appears in many of the outdoor scenes. Then a few weeks later, we started rehearsals on a Saturday and Sunday morning locally and then we would film at BBC Wales in Llandaff every Tuesday. So I basically had five Tuesdays off school. The school was really supportive and I just made sure I caught up with the work.

There was always a big team of presenters on the show, so how easy was it for everyone to get along and work together?

Marie: I got along with everyone, we were very much a team. I became good friends with one other presenter and the daughter of the producer.

Rachel: Jethro Bradley and I already knew each other as we were at the same school and luckily the whole gang got on. There were eight of us altogether – Ben Slade, Misty Whittle, Morgan Powell, Adam Harding, Leah (I can’t remember her surname) and Kate Goodwin-Mead (who had previously appeared).

Marie on the Why Don't You? set in 1982

Now, Rachel, I believe a young Russell T Davies was involved with the programme during your tenure, so what was it like working with him? And could you tell he was destined for greatness?

Rachel: Russell was amazing. He was so full of life and hugely creative. His love of Doctor Who was obvious back then as in one scene we were all chased by a Cyberman - and that was Russell dressed up! We had a Why Don’t You? factsheet for viewers and many of the drawings in it were drawn by Russell. I knew he would go on and do great things. He just had so much zest and enthusiasm. I cried for weeks after filming finished because he just made everything so fun.

What can you remember about the features you presented?

Marie: I presented a rogue gallery - the producers had written to our parents without our knowledge and asked for photographs of us as babies. I was asked to present the section and keep it a secret from the rest of the gang. I did and the surprise was very funny.

Rachel: The most memorable one for me is the electric lemon - I had to make an electric lemon with one lemon, a piece of zinc and a piece of copper. Unfortunately, we took a few takes to get it right and even then it didn’t actually give me an electric shock - my acting is purely dreadful. I also made Shredded Wheat nests in the kitchen, played a racing greyhound game and many games which involved a piece of string.

Ben Slade played a bit of a ‘mad professor’ role so we also had many scenes where we weren’t allowed to touch a certain box in the cupboard and around a machine he had built which he hoped would be used for transporting us to different places - very Dr Who-inspired!!

Do you think a modern version of Why Don't You? could work on television today?

Marie: It was a more innocent time, and although some members of the Why Don't You? gang went on to other TV shows, most of us did it for fun. I think there is a danger that a programme of this nature would, today, be hijacked by those looking to become famous.

Rachel: I’d love to see it return but it would only appeal to much younger kids as teenagers can source any info they want online now.

Any other memories?

Marie: I have very fond memories of roaming Whiteladies Road as a gang, hanging out at Bristol museum at lunch time to keep warm and laughing a lot. It was a fantastic experience.

Rachel: I had a complete blast filming it. You have to remember I was 13 and getting time of school to basically have fun! It was such a laugh and although I cringe watching it back, I’m actually really proud that I was a part of the last Cardiff gang ever. I didn’t end up working in TV but that was certainly my dream for a while.

I remember being so excited because there was a feature on the Cardiff Gang in the Easter Radio Times. I’ve still got a copy of it with our picture. We were all given clothes for the show which were chosen for us, as well as a name badge designed by Russell. I had an orange top, drainpipe denim jeans with massive turn-ups and white Gola trainers. Very 80s!!!

Many thanks to Marie and Rachel!

By Scampy Spiro

With folk horror having become the subject of increasing cultural fascination over the past decade (fuelled, in part, by the spotlight it received in Mark Gatiss’ 2010 documentary series A History of Horror), one candidate that still seems curiously overdue for rediscovery would be Snap, a 1987 installment from the ITV children’s anthology series Dramarama (1983-1989).

A motley collection comprising contributions from a variety of different ITV production outfits, Dramarama was known for its willingness to take on the weird and the eerie (in its earliest incarnation, all of the episodes were linked by a supernatural theme, under the heading of Spooky), and in Snap we find the series indulging a particularly arty bent.

It’s probably fair to approach the episode, directed by Michael Kerrigan from a teleplay by Richard Cooper, as Dramarama’s answer to the BBC’s line of classic supernatural dramas derived from the works of M.R. James - most notably Whistle and I’ll Come to You, directed by Jonathon Miller as part of the Omnibus strand in 1968, and A Warning to the Curious, Lawrence Gordon Clark’s 1972 addition to his annual, decade-spanning anthology series, A Ghost Story for Christmas. Both are now regarded by folk horror enthusiasts as quintessential entries to the canon, with Snap being an admirable attempt to recreate the same sense of macabre desolation that makes them such immersive viewing.

Snap tells the story of a boy who is packed off on a hiking expedition across the Romney Marshes as part of a dubious school assignment, apparently intended to build character and make him better equipped for surviving the rat race. Narrative action consists largely of our hero traversing the fields and sands while gradually cottoning on to the fact that he is not alone out there; wherever he goes, he is stalked by a hooded, shadowy figure whose intentions, we suspect, are none too savoury.

As it turns out, our protagonist has unwittingly entered into a dangerous duel, in which his very future and identity are now at stake; the boy and his pursuer are portrayed by Alex Crockett (whom you may recognise as David Jefford from Press Gang) and Jason Rush (who later had a run on EastEnders), and the closing credits confirm that that they answer to a common moniker, Peter Ibbotson.

The story ends with the original Peter returning to the road where his father Frank (Roy Boyd) had agreed to collect him, only to discover that Shadow Peter has inexplicably taken his place in the passenger seat of his father’s van, as he is consigned, helplessly, to the oblivion of the darkened marshes. This is a children’s drama, yet no attempt is made to sugar-coat the bleakness of its conclusion; it trusts that its viewers can handle a full-on shot of teatime disturbance.

The influence of the M.R. James adaptations is evident in the emphasis on the lonely, implicitly forbidding nature of a seemingly picturesque landscape – a landscape so uncanny that the spectres therein feel like mere extensions of a bigger, more omnipresent threat, something that Snap allows to fester in its long stretches of silence, and the predominant absence of characters outside of Peter and his aggressor.

As with both Whistle and I’ll Come to You and A Warning to the Curious, a chase across beach terrain provides the film with one of its most indispensable sequences, while the figure of the Shadow Peter appears to have been consciously modelled on that of William Ager, the vengeful wraith from A Warning to the Curious. Snap is also book-ended by an extract from “The Rime of The Ancient Mariner” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge:

“Like one that on a lonesome road / Doth walk in fear and dread / And having once turned round walks on / And turns no more his head / Because he knows, a frightful fiend / Doth close behind him tread.” This reference gives additional weight to the ostensibly innocuous seagulls glimpsed as Peter nears the beaches on which his destiny is drastically rewritten, further emphasising the uncanny nature of the landscape by suggesting an inherent interconnection between the natural and the supernatural (in Coleridge’s poem, the title character was cursed for murdering an albatross that, it transpired, had some powerful allies).

The title Snap derives from both the underlying theme of duplicity (referring to the card game where the objective is to identify similar cards), and from Peter’s passion for Polaroid photography, a hobby that itself entails the replication of imagery. The early stages of Peter’s journey are experienced through the instant pictures he collects, static images that initially show an idyllic English countryside.

As Peter treads deeper into the marshes, his Polaroids are pervaded by increasingly macabre imagery – dead hawks, goat skulls and finally the murky silhouette of his own stalker surveying him from the shrubbery. It is implied, through a voiceover, that the camera was a gift from Frank, and that Peter’s desire to master the art of photography stems from the imperative to do his father proud. There is a cruel irony to Peter’s obvious attachment to an occasion on which his very existence was treated as cause for celebration, given that Snap deals with his obliteration from a world that seems all too eager to cast him aside.

Thematically, Snap has as much in common with those BBC ghost stories as it does the classic Twilight Zone episode Mirror Image, which sees Vera Miles competing with a malevolent doppelganger, apparently the expatriate of a parallel universe, for survival rights in her own timeline. Like Miles’ character, Peter seems fated to lose his battle for effectively no other reason than the woeful shortage of sympathy he finds among the bystanders to his plight.

Although Snap is largely a two-hander between Crockett and Rush, early on in his adventure Peter stops at a church where he is rejected by adult authority in the form of a trio of workmen who take an immediate disliking to him (one of them, a painter played by Sam Smart, tells Peter to “get lost”, an instruction he will be shortly forced to take all too literally).

The original Peter is unvalued wherever he goes, to the extent that there is arguably an air of conspiracy to the school’s response in sending him out to the marshes on his own; the insinuation is that the adults around him have set the stage for the Shadow Peter to supplant him, not so much through distrust or indifference than because they have willed the original Peter out of the picture.

The story’s conclusion is foreshadowed in the opening scene, when Peter glimpses his shadow-self attempting to hitch a ride from the vantage point of his father’s van, and is advised by Frank that, “I’ve got one layabout on board, let’s leave it at that.” The pivotal transformation occurs midway through the story, when the Shadow Peter manages to get hold of the original Peter’s yellow parka, leaving his own black coat for the original Peter to don; they have effectively shed and exchanged their skins with one another.

But even before then, it is suggested that Peter already has something of the Shadow Peter inside of him; we see flickers of a troublesome nature following his unwelcome reception at the church, when he potentially kicks a can of paint across a tombstone in retaliation, although the act itself occurs offscreen, leaving it unclear if the original Peter is actually the culprit.

This prompts the question as to the exact essence of the Shadow Peter, has he wandered in from a parallel dimension, like Miles’ sinister double, in which case the marshes might be seen as a supernatural crossroad at which different realities converge, or does he signify some suppressed part of Peter’s character that, out in the otherworld, is assuming frightening new life? The latter is hinted at in the climactic sequence, when Peter, lured once again into the illusory refuge of the church, is greeted by his shadow self with assurances of familiarity: “You know that you like me. The secret of me, the darkness of me and the things I do. You know me.”

If the implication is that Peter has willed his shadow self into being, perhaps out of frustration at the rejection he routinely faces from his adult company, then we might ponder to what extent Snap should be viewed as a morality story. Is Peter a victim of his own poor choices, and his ultimate inability to prevent his darker impulses from taking over? Or is he done in by the coldness of his adult overseers, who as good as push him down his self-destructive path?

The greatest betrayal occurs at the end, in Frank’s apparent failure to notice that the son he has picked up is not the same one he dropped off, raising questions as to his complicity in Peter’s fate. From Frank’s perspective, the excursion has been a success – Peter has been sent off into the marshes and come back a different person. Compared to his shrinking counterpart at the start of the story (who, in Frank’s words, could “just about string five words together”), Shadow Peter seems a livelier, more confident beast.

And yet, we sense that Frank’s willingness to accept his new, improved son could ultimately be to his own detriment, as foreshadowed in the story’s taunting punchline, supplied by the smirking Shadow Peter: “It’s alright, Dad. I’m going to be different from now on. You’ll see.” The “You’ll see”, echoed for effect, has dual meaning, highlighting the irony in Frank’s ostensible inability to see the difference while hinting ominously at Shadow Peter’s forthcoming retribution against the world to which he is now headed. In this regard, Snap is not so much a warning to the curious as to the callous.

Dramarama would again tackle the idea of a sinister mirror world infringing on our own in a 1989 instalment, Back to Front (and if I didn’t know better, I would swear that Jordan Peele saw this one prior to directing Us). The final outcome, while not dissimilar to that of Snap, incorporates a greater element of quirky humour. It would make for a brilliant double bill, if you’d prefer to wash the grimness down with a little malevolent glee.

For more from Scampy, visit: https://spirochaetetrail.blogspot.com/

As a preschooler, Bric-a-Brac was easily one of my favourite television programmes and it's a fact which remains true to this day. However, it's a programme which, despite being repeated for nearly a decade, has had very little of substance written about it. This isn't a surprise as, well, very little information is available and only a handful of episodes have ever surfaced on YouTube. But, luckily, a few years ago, I picked up a copy of the 1983 See-Saw annual, which contains the only official photos I've found. And it's going to help us look at the items in Brian Cant's Bric-a-Brac shop.

Now, I could have done this article several years ago, using the available episodes on YouTube as my source. But, and this is a stickler for me, they're far from broadcast quality, so any screenshots would have been poor and murky. This is no criticism to the uploaders - one of whom is myself - more an acknowledgement that decades old recordings don't always survive well. Anyway, the good news is that, yesterday, I finally purchased a scanner. This means I've been able to scan the Bric-a-Brac photos from the See-Saw annual at a relatively decent quality.

First off, there's the magnificent sight of Brian Cant as the Bric-a-Brac shopkeeper, although he's curiously missing his glasses here, in amongst a plethora of items. This particular shot appears to have been taken during the filming of the very first episode, which was broadcast on Wednesday 1st October 1980 and looked at the letter B. So, yes, lots of items beginning with B here including: Bruin the bear who's wearing a bowler hat adorned with a banana and carrying a bugle alongside a brolly which is poking into a tin bucket. Bruin is also holding a book, which the See-Saw annual claims is a book about bears, but it looks more like a book on how to count. Next to Bruin, there stands a bicycle with a basket - which appears to be carrying a bunny - and a bell.

Those are the B words, but what else can we see in this picture? Well. there's a lot of books, but it's difficult to make out what any of them are due to the resolution of the original picture. On the top shelf, there's an orange book which appears to be some sort of 'How To Break Your New' guide but I sadly can't make out the rest of the title. The top shelves are also home to a delightful yellow teapot and a small collection of vases and figurines that you would expect to see in an elderly relative's house. The middle shelves, meanwhile, house a fantastic Jack in the Box, a figurine of a mother with her children and, rather randomly, a castor.

Moving on to the P page, we get to meet some of the items featured in the P episode which first aired on Wednesday 15th September 1982. This, of course, was the only episode to feature a living being other than Brian Cant, with Polly the parrot - on her perch - making an appearance to help teach youngsters about phonics.We can't discern much more about the contents of the shop here but, once again, the background is plastered with books. There is at the bottom left, some crockery and also a rather large tin saucepan but that's about it.

Over on the metal shelves of the shop, we find more items beginning with P, most noticeably a plastic penguin which, as the episode demonstrates, is a windup toy. This penguin is joined by a pile of postcards with, you guessed it, one from Paris at the very top. Also on show is half a coconut and, in the background, a tatty old rug can be seen taking up space on the floor. Again, not too much to enter into our inventory, but it's better than nothing.

Next up is a whole world of items beginning with S and, at last, some identifiable books. As the annual informs us, there is some string, saucepans and socks occupying the shelves. Also making an appearance is an ancient bust, a ship in a bottle and, amongst the books, a couple of old clocks.

If you click on the picture above, you'll get a slightly larger version of it, and you may just be able to make out a couple of the identified books. At the bottom left of the picture, there's a white book which is, in fact, a copy of The Comet is Coming by Nigel Calder, released in early 1980. Also, on the second shelf up on the right, a green book hangs over the edge - this is Community Care for the Mentally Disabled by JK Wing and released in 1979. On the left hand shelf, directly above the one containing the socks, there's a red, leather bound book on its side, and this is Modern Legal Forms by West Key Number System and CJS Reference - exact publishing date unknown, but these were certainly out in the early 1980s.

I also managed to pick out multiple copies of the BBC tie-in version of Blood Money by Arden Winch, a rather gripping story which was adapted for the small screen in 1981. Keen to fill up the shelves, the BBC have also managed to install several copies of their tie-in book for World's End, a 1981 series which told "the story of a London village". Clearly, many of these books were either grabbed from the props department or the BBC Publications office was raided.

There's a little more S fun to be had with a set of military figurines which have clearly seen better days. Nonetheless, they act as an archaic reminder of children's toys from the past, for some reason I assume that children of today don't play with army soldiers. They're probably all into zorbing and drill, or I'm simply even more out of touch that I thought.

It's time to rewind through the alphabet and back to the letter G, where the items on offer are those that showed up in the episode first broadcast on Wednesday 22nd September 1982. It's a very G-centric image with no other items getting a look in. A goldfish bowl is used to hold not only a set of Penfold golf balls, but also a tube of glue and a gimlet style corkscrew. Again, there's something for a chintzy aunt in the form of a glass galleon and, perhaps for a thirsty uncle, a glass goblet which is perfect for glugging from.

But the G-ness doesn't stop there, we're also lucky enough to have another G-picture packed full of items for our eager eyes. So, from the top, we have a pair of ladies gloves balancing above a globe whilst, down below, there's plenty to view. The goldfish bowl is back, but this time it's been filled with grapes and it's flanked by a miniature guitar and a gong. Two more windup toys have appeared in the form of a gorilla and, it took me a while to figure out what it was, a grasshopper (a better view of it can be seen in the episode here). Finally, to complete this festival of G's, there's an old gate which apparently belongs to Gus.

The table is also home to a polishing cloth and what seems to be a bottle of, I guess, polish? Also present, in the background, is an old, leather armchair with some sort of throw over it. Books, again, populate the walls but they're far too out of focus to identify. If you look closely above the gate, you can also see the handlebar of a small toy pram which features in the P episode.

And, so, we're on to our final look at the contents of the Bric-a-Brac shop and, this time, we'll be visiting the items featured in the W episode, from Wednesday 25th August 1982. It's a bit of a clutter, but it wouldn't be a Bric-a-Brac shop without an untidy element. Atop a wicker basket there sits an old bicycle wheel and a muddy wellington boot, with a dusty wireless in front of all this. There's more books, of course, including another copy of Blood Money, and, rather oddly, a lacrosse stick propped up against the shelf. A wooden chair, which may or may not be carrying some LPs, has also been used to hold a navy and white neckerchief.

We've barely scratched the surface of what could be found in the Bric-a-Brac shop and, indeed, if we had access to all the episodes in HD quality, this article would be so long that even my patience would be tested. Nonetheless, at least we know a little more of what's lurking in the shop now, and I think I'll almost certainly have to get a copy of the BBC tie-in Blood Money book in homage to this magical series.

If there's anything I've missed out or you can determine what some of the books on the shelves are, then please leave a comment below.

It's debatable if EastEnders, despite running for 38 years now, is still considered a hot property. Nonetheless, when it launched in 1985, it was accompanied by a huge buzz of excitement which lasted for many, many years. Not surprisingly, this popularity quickly led to a nice line in merchandise to generate further revenue for the BBC.

And, in 1986, the first EastEnders annual appeared. I looked at this annual in an issue of the now defunct Curious British Telly fanzine, but I thought it would be fun to bring two of its more curious sections to a wider audience: The EastEnders Cook Book and Wicksy's Cocktails.

Click the pictures for larger versions

While I'm no Jay Rayner, I still consider myself a gourmet. Only the other night, for example, I had sushi for dinner and, as I write, I'm in the process of digesting some wild garlic soda bread which I baked with my daughter. So, what would I make of the EastEnders gourmet offerings from those heady gustatory days of 1986? Hmmm, well, I'm not really sure where to start.

I tried jellied eels once, and that was more than enough, so I'm not entirely sure if I could ever get on board with Ethel's Eel Pie. Pastry, of course, is a fantastic packaging for any food, so I think I'd certainly consider putting a forkful in my mouth, but further progress would be minimal if at all. Now we move on to Ali's Turkish Coffee, and I can assure you that I would be more than happy to take this on. Turkish coffee is an intense, yet flavourful experience and it's been far too long since I've indulged in such delights.

Naima's Iced Tea Cocktail would also be much appreciated by my taste buds and I dare say it's an absolute winner on a summer's day. Preferably, it'd be served with a splash of vodka, but the EastEnders album was aimed at children, so non-alcoholic it is. Finally, we have Dr Legg's Gefilte Fish, and I'm genuinely not sure whether, unless I was at gunpoint, I would ever choose this or Ethel's eel pie. Naturally, I've never tried gefilte fish, so it could well be delicious but the recipe here sounds as plain as an 80's ready meal.

Wicksy's Cocktails, meanwhile, are what we now call mocktails due to the absence of alcohol. Most of the fun here comes from spotting the awful puns crowbarred into the cocktails' names - I mean, Contrary Mary and Lean Lofty for goodness sake - and eyeballing the ancient packaging for the drinks involved, just look at that Kia-Ora carton and can of Appletise (before it became Appletiser). If I had to go for one of these then, undoubtedly, it would be Pete's Fruity Fizz as it's probably the most mid-1980s thing on offer here.

TV-tie in annuals don't seem to be such a big thing anymore but, whilst this peek inside one hardly inspires confidence, they remain a fun piece of nostalgia. Yes, they were little more than a cash-in for the people producing them, but the excitement of unwrapping one on Christmas day rarely resulted in disappointment. And, all these decades on, they provide a fascinating snapshot of what British society was like in the past, even if it was painfully plain food and sugary drinks.

Just a quick update to let you know that I’ve decided to try out the paid-subscription option on Substack to deliver exclusive Curious British Telly bits and pieces. You can find out more about the Substack here. There will, of course, continue to be free posts on the Substack and on here but I thought I’d see if anyone is willing to subscribe.

The articles behind the paywall will be similar to the articles featured in the now defunct Curious British Telly fanzine, and there will be at least one a week.

Any proceeds generated will go towards investing more money in the Substack and the main Curious British Telly e.g. trips to the BFI Archive and, as I’ve been threatening to for years, finally purchase a Betamax player and a mountain of old tapes to investigate.

However, there’s no pressure as I appreciate there’s a cost of living crisis hitting everyone and, well, archive television isn’t the most important thing in life. So, if you do want to subscribe - either to the free or paid version - then just click here.

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