Golden Memories: TV Programmes (Part One)

By drkevin

Tue, 17 Aug 2021
  • 441 reads
3 comments
 

 

Well, it was all monochrome for the 1960's proletariat. We had a portable Ferranti TV with incorporated radio and massive unreliability. It had more controls at the back of the set than the front, and we must have wasted hours trying to coordinate the vertical and horizontal hold settings. My mum was rather sensitive after the divorce and it must have driven her to the brink of insanity.

Me too.

TV was a totem pole in the living room and we silently prayed that all the valves would light up. Doom laden, hushed voices would describe the fear that one day 'the tube' would go and our world would end. 'Piped' TV (cable) was available in some areas and this was coveted like the second coming. Colour TV was as remote as caviar and Champagne.

A sci-fi god beyond comprehension.

The programmes themselves were propped up by eager imagination, because the production values were typically so low they were subterranean. Brilliant exceptions presaged the future, however, including 'The Avengers', 'The Prisoner' and 'Startrek'. Cartoons and sport were wonderful novelties to my childhood perception and I would suck up any amount of cricket, Huckleberry Hound, Popeye, horse racing and the Flintstones (etc. etc.). How things change...

Nowadays, we're almost choked by these things, with every advert a kid's show and international sporting events multiplying like rabbits on acid. Too much non-information.

And more is definitely less....

Certificate 15
Story
Historical Fiction
Humour
Opinion
Other Fiction
Miscellaneous
Autobiography

Comments

Submitted by skinner_jennifer on

I remember The Avengers so well and loved all the cartoons you mentioned, including my all time favourite Top Cat. I liked the fact we only had two channels at the time, it made life so much easier.

I enjoyed reading your memory jolt.

Jenny.

 

Submitted by drkevin on

 

Yes, I liked Top Cat. I think it was called ,'Boss Cat' in some countries, and was apparently based on the old 'Sergeant Bilko' series. The characters are almost identical.
Thanks for commenting.

 

Submitted by Turlough on

In 1964, when I was seven years old, I was caught in a huge dilemma. Should I marry pop star Dusty Springfield or Diana Rigg (the actress who played the part of Emma Peel in The Avengers)?

I didn't know how to contact them so I decided I would just wait until I bumped into one of them in the street and pop the question there and then on a first come first served basis. I accepted that I may have a long wait as, apart from my proposal of marriage, there was little to attract either of these beautiful ladies to Middlesbrough where I lived, but at least it would give me the time to grow into an adult, become rich and learn about where babies come from.

I had a Plan B to fall back on in the unlikely event that neither Dusty nor Diana found me or the industrial expanses of my home town alluring. I would ask Patricia Waters, the girl who sat next to me at school, if she would be my wife.

I couldn't find 'sod off' in the big dictionary that sat on the shelf behind the school teacher's desk and the rest of my life followed the path of the previously unplanned Plan C.

The Avengers was a marvellous telly programme though, as was Top of the Pops back in the day.

Turlough