Riding through the glen

' Are you sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin ', are the earliest words many of us baby boomers remember emanating from the radio at 1.45pm every day as we were tuned in to Listen with Mother on the Light Programme. What became a well known phrase was oiled out by a somewhat maternalistic, firmly upper middle class doyenne of the BBC, a Lord Reith supporter through and through. She then treated us to a song, a nursery rhyme and a brief story. I remember looking forward to this as a semi-exciting event, while preferring rather my mother  --  strange to think she was a mere thirty five at the time  --  reading me the Rupert Bear story that appeared every day in the Daily Express.

So we chugged along until the coronation in 1953 and then it was ' all change ' as, in common with many other families, we kept the television hired to view the big event and I graduated to Watch with Mother. There was Andy Pandy [ ' coming to play ' ], a gentle soul, a seemingly near relation, one might think, of Basil Fotherington Thomas, wandering along in the Down with Skool books, like Little Johnny Head-in Air [ if you can bear the double, Struwwelpeter analogy ], addressing the sky and the clouds with estimable affection. The Woodentops were there; so too of course were Bill and Ben, giving vent to their misogynistic tendencies, as they addressed with scant regard the most definitely inferior Little Weed, redolent to a degree of Elizabeth in the Just William series and I hope you are enjoying this romp through childhood culture of seventy years ago.

So the mid-1950s came upon us and with a cataclysmic roar too. If  22nd September 1955 is not etched, wherever you etch things, then it should be. For on that day ITV, Independent Television, started its full range of programmes and we were treated  --  O Joy, O Rapture unforeseen  -- to a second channel. What was the BBC to do? Answer: make the sleepy Archers come to life with a traumatic and violent event. Poor Grace Archer, highly desirable thirty year old wife of dashing young Phil, had to die heroically rescuing a horse from a blazing barn. The nation wept; we had not long before got over the passing of King George VI but the juggernaut of ITV sailed on, sometimes serenely, occasionally by no means so. Theories then abounded: had Grace in fact been disposed of by the BBC hierarchy because she [ Ysanne Churchman in real life ] was agitating for TV actors, and especially women, to be paid full Equity rates and her candle therefore needed to be snuffed out? However, it is not too late for such a wrong to be righted. Sixty five years later the plot lines in The Archers have become so bizarre;  why not bring Grace back as she didn't die after all? Ysanne Churchman is still alive and well at 95 and she would be a mere chicken beside Peggy, still played by June Spencer who will be 101 this year.

So the BBC took fright and issued a cumbersome consultation paper in 1956, to all those in the UK with a TV, asking our opinions on programmes present and possibly to come. This gave young addicts an opportunity and an excuse to watch everything, certainly by day in holiday time as long as parental approval was forthcoming. I  watched a variety of programmes in which I was not in the slightest interested. I recall particularly the glamorous wedding of Prince Rainier of Monaco and the pin-up girl of Hollywood, Grace Kelly, with whom I had not at that stage fallen in love, not yet having revelled in High Noon, surely the greatest Western ever made [ fairly closely followed by The Wild Bunch ].

The regular TV viewing for a 9 to 12 year old moved to the 5 o'clock children's slot. It was not yet the right time for the saucy double entendres of Captain Pugwash and The Magic Roundabout; instead we were presented with wondrous Boys Own style adventure stories: Union Jack [ NB please, not Union Flag ] waving, would have been Brexit tub thumping, apparently honest to goodness tales of derring do  --  children's TV successors apparently to The Bridge on the River Kwai and Reach for the Sky.

Three in particular of these series come to mind; first The Adventures of Sir Lancelot, the heroic rescuer of the oppressed, especially damsels in distress, never far from other attractive personalities, including Merlin and Queen Guinevere  --  and was there the slightest hint for older viewers that Sir L might actually be gracing her tent of a night in the soggy Wessex marshes?  Anyway, we all joined in the signature tune:

Now listen to my story, yes listen while I sing
Of days of  old in England, when Arthur was the King;
Of Merlin the magician and Guinevere the Queen
And Lancelot the bravest knight the world has ever seen.
In days of old, when knights were bold, the story's told
Of Lancelot.

He rode the wilds of England, adventures for to see
To rescue maidens in distress and help the poor and wee.
If anyone oppress you, he'd be their champion,
He fought a million battles and never lost the one.

Those who fitted into the ' wee ' category and especially if you were a maiden as well, must have been relieved to know that Lancelot would take time off fighting all those battles to implement his rescue plan.

Then there was the feisty William Tell and his life and death struggle with Lamburgher Gessler [ sounding just a bit close to a commercial for an early day MacDonalds with mint sauce ].

Come away, come away with William Tell,
Come away to the land he loved so well;
What a day, what a day when the apple fell
For Tell ........ and Switzerland.

So there he was, righting the wrongs imposed on the oppressed peasantry and we were introduced to the more dramatic characteristics of a nation we thought perhaps were all about expensive watches, fine chocolates, posh skiing and never going to war. And the apple which William T shot off his son's head with a crossbow bolt helped to make that fruit one of choice. To be truthful it had languished a little in the minds of some of us as the brilliant but sometimes tedious Isaac Newton leapt up in his orchard as the falling fruit hit him on the head and he exclaimed ' Eureka, my friend, you're a wonderful example of gravitational force ' or some such.

Finally, before this becomes an even more tedious travelogue of 1950s children's TV, there was the irrepressible and irreplaceable Richard Green as Robin Hood and celebrated for ever for his unique style of, and attachment to, his outlawish tights. You may recall the ditty:

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood with his band of men,
Feared by the bad, loved by the good,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Robin Hood.

We can picture him, half way up an oak tree in Sherwood Forest with his celebrated girlfriend, MM, perched ever so demurely and dutifully astride his trusted staff while below the Sherriff of Nottingham speeds by on his charger or, in the modern parlance, charges by in his speedos. Robin hums the next verse:

He called the greatest archers to a tavern on the green;
He vowed to help the people of the King;
He handled all the troubles on the English country scene
And still found plenty of time to sing.

Robin turns to Marion [ or turns her over ] to give her the plan for the week ahead, ' On Wednesday I'll sort out these vagrants responsible for county lines; then on Thursday I'm going to deal with those cads stealing farm machinery, especially the sophisticated IT gear on tractors; on Friday I'll compete in the National Darts Championships at Turnham Green; and on Saturday I think I'll sing Idomeneo at Glyndebourne. '

You might be thinking, as we did then, that this was all about rampant British patriotism but you would be only partially correct. All these series were the work of American screenwriters, effectively refugees in England from their own country, having stood firm against, and then hounded out by, extreme right wing McCarthyism. This explains why the heroes: Lancelot, Tell and Hood all defended the downtrodden individual citizen in the name of the country's principles and ethos often against corrupt authority and officialdom.

And all the while the pervasive influence of advertising on television was taking hold. Into the soul and into the culture came these commercial juggernauts and for some of us they are still there sixty years later. The arrival of ITV was a real social revolution.

On BBC all looked well groomed;
Newscasters wore black tie and boomed.
Along came the Street
With ads so upbeat;
Normal service will not be resumed.

To celebrate sixty five years on, I give you The Musings Quiz. You obviously have to be pretty aged to attempt it: 30 questions about TV advertisements in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The answers follow the questions. If you score 20, that's respectable; 25 shows a high level of attentiveness and a good memory; 30 shows that you completely wasted your youth when you should have been reading War and Peace [ in Russian of course ].

1 The ..... ... kid is tough and strong
2 The ........ ring of confidence
3 ...... ..... are a minty bit stronger
4 ... .... as regular as time itself
5 My goodness my ........
6 ... adds brightness to whiteness
7 ..... makes ....... bounce with health
8 You'll wonder where the ...... went when you brush your teeth with .........
9 ........, buy some for Lulu
10 Go to work on an ...
11 ... meat for dogs ........ Active ....
12 A .... a day helps you work, rest and play
13 ...., .... cleans a big, big carpet for less than .... . .....
14 The job's well done, you're really satisfied when you clean with ... ... ...
15 .... ...... made to make your mouth water
16 The ten second sweet that's delicious to eat ........ Creamed ....
17 ...., the mint with a hole
18 Pick up a .......
19 ........., cool as a mountain stream
20 You're never alone with a .....
21 A ...... ....... works wonders
22 Fry's ....... ....... full of Eastern .......
23 ...... make tea bags make tea
24 Four kinds of ....... shampoo, one is for you
25 Tonic water by ....., you know who
26 The .... sign means happy motoring
27 We're going well, we're going ......, we're going well thanks to ..... ...... ......
28 ...... ..... too good to hurry mints
29 Don't just say brown, say .....
30 ........ looks good, tastes good and by golly it does you good
31 [ bonus question ] Hands that do dishes as soft as your face with .... ..... ..... ......
.
Was it all too easy or quite impossible? Here are the answers:
1 Milky Bar
2 Colegate
3  Trebor Mints
4 All Bran
5 Guinness
6 OMO
7 Trill .... budgies
8 yellow ... Pepsodent
9 Smarties
10 egg
11 PAL ........ Prolongs  ... Life
12 Mars
13 1001, 1001 ........ half a crown
14 Vim Vim Vim!
15 Opal Fruits
16 Ambrosia .... Rice
17 Polo
18 Penguin
19 Consulate
20 Strand
21 Double Diamond
22 Turkish Delight ...... promise
23 Tetley
24 Sunsilk
25 Schhh
26 Esso
27 Shell ............ Shell Shell Shell
28 Murray Mints
29 Hovis
30 Mackeson
31 mild green Fairy Liquid

Happy viewing wherever you are; some people have a lot of that particular pastime ahead of them.

20th March 2020