Watch With Mad Wicca (Top Ten Children's Programmes)

Member Name: Mad_Wicca

Product:	Top Ten Children's Programmes
Date:	27/09/01 (9477 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: They are all lovely, lovely, lovely

Disadvantages: I'm not little anymore, it's not the Seventies, You can't get some of them on video

Going through the ops in this category got me thinking about some of the children’s programmes I loved. I didn’t watch a lot of TV when I was a kid, preferring to be outdoors, running around, getting dirty and shouting a lot. However, there were a few programmes I would try and wend my way back home to catch.

Some were dinnertime entertainment, when the meagre hour you had to get home, get some food down you and get back to school just couldn’t be filled in any other way but with TV. A few were after school programmes, handy for filling the time you had when you got home but didn’t feel like settling down to homework, or you were waiting for your friends to come round to play.

Most of my choices seem to be programmes that I remember watching at a time when school had not even entered my life. My elder sister, a constant playmate, had started her first year of school and I was left at home with Mummy Mad Wicca, who had her housework to get through before we could play together, and so these programmes became my playmates. I may not have understood quite what they were trying to teach me, or even the fact that they *were* trying to teach me anything at all, but I do know that they made me laugh, told me stories, showed me how to make exciting toys with toilet rolls and, most of all, they brought me a lot of enjoyment.

As with any top 10 I do there is no order to it, a bit like my life! So I’ll just jump straight in wherever the fancy takes me. Now, go and get your favourite teddy or dolly, settle down on the settee under a comfy blanket, with a cup of hot chocolate and a biscuit or two near by, and lets watch some telly together.

Hickory House.
I used to think I had made this programme up. Years after I had left my childhood behind I would mention this programme to people and they would stare at me, blank faced, and then say, ‘Oh you mean Hector’s House!’ But I didn’t. I me
ant Hickory House, with Dusty Mop and Humphrey Cushion, but because no one ever remembered it I started to think it was some bizarre childhood daydream. Then I found a few sparse items about it on the Internet and realised I wasn’t going mad after all, well no more than usual.

Alan Rothwell, who also presented Picture Box and appeared in later years as a drug-addled madman in Brookside, presented Hickory House. It would start with him leaving the house and then all the seemingly inanimate objects would come to life and have adventures before he got back. What these adventures entailed I can’t really remember now, but I did have an affinity for Humphrey Cushion, who I think was a sort of grey blob with a big nose. I was always waiting for my own settee cushions to come to life, but sadly they never did.

Play School.
‘A house.... with a door.
Windows... one, two, three, four.
Ready to play?
What's the day?’

Play School was first shown in 1964 and taken off the air in 1988. My era was the early and mid ‘70’s, when the presenters were the likes of Chloe Ashcroft, Johnny Ball, Floella Benjamin, Brian Cant, Carol Chell, Fred Harris, Carol Leader, Derek Griffiths and Toni Arthur.

It was on every day of the week and if you missed it at dinnertime there was always a chance to catch up with a second showing at teatime. Each day two presenters, nearly always a man and a woman, would find out what object was under the clock (from which we were taught the basics of telling the time, ‘and the big hand is on twelve, so that means it’s…’. The object under the clock then formed the theme of the show, but in my pre-school mind I never cottoned on to this!

To me it was just toys, stories, songs, making things, dressing up, pets and wobbly dancing, (Jelly on the plate. Jelly on the plate. Wibble, wobble, wibble, wobble. Jelly on the plate). There was the trip
through the windows, square, circle and arched. I always picked the arch and felt like it had been chosen especially by me when the strange harp music started up and the picture dissolved through that particular one.

Another appealing aspect for me was the Play School pets, as at the time I longed for a furry, scaly or feathered friend to call my own, but my parents weren’t having any of it. However, through Play School I felt that in someway I did have pets I could at least see every day. There was Bit and Bot the goldfish, Buffy the rabbit, Lizzie the Guinea Pig, the mice and, my favourite, K’Too the cockatoo, who would dance along to Jonathan Cohen playing the piano for the songs.

Then there were the toys, which were used to play games or illustrate stories and songs. Jemima was a floppy, cloth doll, with wool for hair and 2 big red patches for cheeks, who could never sit up straight and always ended up with her head resting on her knees. Another toy that had a problem with balance was Humpty, probably due to the fact that he was as big and round as a beach ball, so he was always falling backwards off things, his little tartan trousered legs sticking up in the air. Humpty tended to be propped up next to Hamble, a very strange plastic doll, who always looked like she needed a good wash. The toy contingent was finished off with Big and Little Ted, two stiff limbed pale brown teddy bears. Little Ted looked just like my own teddy, Teddy Edward, and I always used to think that he was Teddy Edwards TV star brother. There was also Dapple the rocking horse, who didn’t quite count as one of the toys, but who I coveted with a passion nevertheless.

My favourite parts were always the songs, ‘Five currant buns in a bakers shop, round and fat with a cherry on the top. Along came a boy with a penny one day. Bought a currant bun and took it away!’ Then there was the terrible miming that went with them, either marching aro
und as a soldier or growing from an acorn into a huge oak tree, ‘come on, wave your branches in the wind!’ Now how many of us can honestly say we didn’t do that?

Ivor the Engine.
‘...Not very long ago, in the top left-hand corner of Wales, there was a railway. It wasn't a very long railway or a very important railway, but it was called The Merioneth and Llantisilly Rail Traction Company Limited, and it was all there was.
And in a shed, in a siding at the end of the railway, lives the Locomotive of the Merioneth and Llantisilly Rail Traction Company Limited, which was a long name for a little engine so his friends just called him Ivor...’

Ivor the Engine was a product of Smallfilms, which was founded by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate, who also produced Noggin the Nog, The Clangers and Bagpuss. It was first made in 1959 as a series of six black and white ten-minute films, and then remade in 1975 as a set of 40 five-minute colour films, which were shown regularly until the 1980’s.

Ivor is a railway engine that has an ambition to sing with the local Grumbly and District Choral Society, run by Evans the Song. The railway’s timetables are adjusted to fit in with Ivor’s choir practice and the people of the village, such as Dai the Station Master, Mrs. Porty, Eli the Baker and Ivor’s engine driver Jones the Steam, do the best they can to see that Ivor gets to ‘sing’. The only person who doesn’t believe that Ivor can ‘talk’ is Mrs. Griffiths, who thinks Jones the Steam is mad.

My favourite episode was when Jones the Steam and Ivor found a hot egg one day. As they were in a rush to get to choir practice they didn’t have time to put it back where it came from and so Jones the Steam put the egg in Ivor’s firebox. Later Idris the Dragon hatched out of the egg and shot out of Ivor’s funnel, singing.

Idris the Dragon wa
s my favourite character and he later met a lady dragon called Olwen, with whom he had twins, Gaian and Blodwen. The dragons would keep warm in Ivor’s firebox, or sometimes Eli the Bakers ovens, and I loved it when they came flying out of Ivor’s funnel, swooping and diving through the air. Ivor’s other special friend was Mrs. Porty’s donkey, Bluebell, and although Ivor and Bluebell couldn’t talk to each other they loved being together.

With its make-believe Welsh villages and the lilting sound of the stories commentary, Ivor the Engine is almost like an ‘Under Milk Wood’ for children. It has certainly stood the test of time and can be appreciated just as much today, by children and adults alike, for its entertainment value.

Camberwick Green.
‘Here is a box, a musical box, wound up and ready to play. But this box can hide a secret inside. Can you guess what is in it today?’

So said Brian Cant at the start of every episode of Camberwick Green. Then, out of the musical box, would appear the character we were going to follow that episode. The background would then fade in and, after a brief chat with Brian; we would get on with the story.

Camberwick Green was a small village near Trumpton, Gordon Murray’s similar popular creation, which was then followed by Chigley. The village consisted of a village green, a post office, bakers and fishmongers, and nearby stood Copley’s Mill, Pippin Fort and Jonathon Bell’s Farm. The main characters that we followed were PC McGarry number 452, Mr Carraway the fishmonger, Farmer and Mrs. Bell, Mrs. Honeyman, the local gossip, and her ever present baby, the postmistress Mrs. Dingle and her puppy Packet, Peter Hazel the postman, Mr. Crocket who owned the garage, Thomas Tripp the milkman, Dr.Mopp, Roger Varley the chimney sweep, Mickey Murphy the baker and his wife and children, the boys at Pippin Fort who were led by Captain Sn
ort and finally, my absolute favourite, Windy Miller.

It always amazed me how Windy Miller could walk into his windmill and never be hit by the spinning sails. Dr. Mopp I found quite frightening with his little black beard and top hat, although he always seemed to be nice to his patients. As with many children’s shows of this era it was Brian Cant’s voice that brought the village and its people to life, especially the songs he sang as they went about their daily business, ‘Windy Miller, Windy Miller sharper than a thorn. Like a mouse he's spry and nimble when he grinds the corn. Like a bird he'll watch the wind and listen for the sound, which says he has the wind he needs to make the sails go round.’

A lot of the time their adventures seemed to be quite mundane, such as Dr.Mopps vintage car breaking down or all the men shutting up shop early to go fishing. Still, whatever the story was that week I was always sad when the character we had been following froze and then descended back into the musical box.

Gordon Murray, the creator of Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley, actually burnt all the sets and puppets from the three shows after they stopped making them, as he didn’t want them to fall into other people’s hands. The only survivor was one of the boys from Camberwick Green’s Fort, which was won by someone when it was given away as a prize on Swapshop. I find that even sadder.

The Flumps.
When I was at infants school we would be taken to the staff room one afternoon a week to sit cross-legged on a rather dusty, threadbare rug to watch Music Time. However, our teacher always used to take us along early so that we could watch the Flumps first, ‘as a treat’ we were told. Now I often wonder if the teacher did it more as a treat for herself, after all, if she hadn’t let us watch it the first time we would never have know about it!

Either way I’
m glad she did as it introduced me to a rather strange, but somewhat twee, northern-voiced family of fluffy pompoms, collectively know as The Flumps. There was Grandfather Flump, who had a twiddly grey moustache and played the Flumpet (an instrument a bit like a trumpet and a tuba), which Pootle, the baby with the bobble hat, was always sticking carrots down to bung it up. Then there was Father, with an equally twiddly moustache who did a lot of DIY, and Mother who wore a headscarf and used to sing the songs. The other two siblings were Posy, who didn’t have a hat but wore a nice, girly bow, and elder brother Perkin, who did have a hat. The Flumps were always having adventures or getting up to mischief in the house and garden, but it was all sorted out by the end of the show.

I tried to make my own Flumps once, begging bits of wool from my Grandma and Great Aunties. Then I cut out two pieces of circular cardboard from a cornflakes packet, cut a circle out of the centre of them then began to wrap the wool around it. I had done it at school before when we made pompom rabbits for easter. Once the wool was wrapped so tight that you couldn’t get anymore through the hole you had to take a pair of scissors, blunt ended and whilst being supervised by an adult of course, and cut the wool down the middle, tie it together and, hey presto, a pompom! I gave up halfway through winding my first Flump, discovering that they were more enjoyable to watch than to make.

Music Time.
‘And the piggies went weeeee, weeee, weeeeeeeeeeee!’

Not exactly an entertaining children’s programme, more a ‘we’re teaching you something but trying to make it look like we’re not’ type of programme. This was the real reason we had to numb our bums on the staff room floor. Once the Flumps was over and we’d counted down those little dots that appeared around the BBC clock, it was time for some musical education. Our
guides through the mind boggling world of C sharps and semi-quavers were a young Australian man, with a frighteningly shaggy perm, called Peter Combe; and a rather elegant, long haired lady called Katherine Harries who, when she opened her mouth to sing, stunned you with her incredibly high, shrill operatic voice, every word perfectly pronounced.

The words of the songs we had to sing were shown on the bottom of the screen, along with the musical notes, which lit up to show you whereabouts you should be in the song. Jonathan Cohen, of Play School fame, played the piano and children were shipped in from various schools to stand around the studio singing along or playing instruments. Those of us watching at our own schools were invited to play along to the music, but the thing was our school didn’t really have much in the way of glockenspiels and triangles so we had to use the ‘poor mans’ method of joining in. This entailed taking the first two fingers of your left hand and tapping them to the rhythm of the music on the palm of your right hand. Not as exciting as a set of drums or a pair of bongos, and if you were singing a really long song your palm could become quite sore.

Nevertheless, I did enjoy the programme, having a good singsong and watching the pictures of the story the songs told. It was always a thrill to watch Peter Combe singing his heart out and jerking around on the square bonket on which he was sitting, perm bobbing about like a poodle in a hurricane. Not wishing to be too crude, but I do remember one of my friends, who was sitting crossed legged on the floor next to me, farting during one of the songs we were singing along to, and it was actually in tune with the music. Maybe that’s why I have such fond memories of this programme!

Pipkins.
Pipkins, oh Pipkins, we’ll never see its like again. Set in a second-hand shop called, you guessed it, Pipkins, it was on twice a week at lunchtimes. The
shop was run by a motley collection of animal puppets (although they were very real to me) that were helped by the human Johnny (Wayne Laryea). It ran from 1973 to 1981 and actually started out with the shop being run by an old man called Inigo Pipkin (George Woodbridge), but unfortunately Woodbridge died after the first series and so Laryea took over.

The point of the shop was that our merry band of string, hand and stick manipulated friends would go out with Johnny into the real world and either help people or learn about the location he took them too. From this there would be all sorts of skits and sketches about what they had learned. Like all programmes of its era there was the inevitable story time, which was announced by a shot of loads of clocks all on one wall.

The puppet gang were made up of Tortoise, a very boring, slow, accident-prone tortoise who looked after the till and worried about money all the time. Then there was Topov, a fuzzy black and white monkey, who appeared in strange places like the top of bookcases or hanging from the ceiling. Octavia was a very vain ostrich that kept looking in a mirror at her beauty and liked to sing opera. I always seem to remember her standing in a child’s sandpit but I’m sure she must have moved around a bit. Pig was, as the name suggests, a pig, who spoke with a brummie accent and invented amazing machines, which were mostly for the use of applying one food to another.

Lastly, there was Hartley Hare, who just made Pipkins for me. Hartley was a rather threadbare looking brown hare, with two big bucked teeth and huge eyes. He believed he was the manager of the shop and could tell all the others what to do, however, they had other ideas. Hartley had an office with a huge desk that had an old fashioned phone on it. I loved it when the phone rang and Hartley, obviously being a hare not having opposable thumbs, would slide his arm into the hook that was on the phones receiver, fli
ck it up with a flourish and hold it to his long ears.

Hartley wanted everything his own way, and would do anything to make sure he got it. He sulked and cheated and if someone showed any interest in something Hartley had to find a way to get whatever it was off them so he could have it to himself, resulting in some dramatic tantrums. But for all that, he was still the best thing about Pipkins. He often went visiting places in the real world by himself, pottering along the Mall or through a market, puzzled people looking on. I never understood why they didn’t go running up to Hartley to give him a big hug, which is what I would have done if I’d ever come across him in the street.

Hartley had two relations that would sometimes come to visit, Angus McHare, his Scottish cousin, and old Uncle Hare who lived deep in the country and would ring Hartley from an old style red telephone box to tell him he was coming. This caused much rushing around and panic from Hartley, which was inter-cut with the slow, sedate plodding of Uncle Hare making his way to Pipkins. It would go back and forth like this until either Hartley collapsed or Uncle Hare arrived.

This programme was and always will be an absolute classic. You might not be able to get the t-shirt, board game, jigsaw, pencil case, key ring or Hartley Hare backpack but I think its about time some videos were released for those of us who remember it fondly.

Rainbow.
‘Up above the street and houses, rainbow flying high. Everyone can see it’s smiling, over the sky. Paint the whole world with a rainbooooooooooow.’

Rainbow was set in a house, mainly in one room that just seemed to contain a table and an open window, with occasional rare forays into the garden, kitchen or bedroom. Whatever room was used looked as if it had been drawn with squiggly lines on paper, then cut out and constructed. All the dishes in the kitchen were drawn on the wall, as was
a big rainbow in the main room.

The cast of Rainbow consisted of Bungle, a bossy bear, which was basically a man in a costume. Then there were George, a pink hippo and Zippy, who had a big zip for a mouth and was a… well it was hard to say exactly what Zippy was, I always thought of him as a worm, but then he had a hand so that wouldn’t work really. In fact, I also thought it a little odd that both Zippy and George only had one arm each, having to work as a team just to get the lid off a jar. The voice of reason and the father figure in all this was Geoffrey (Geoffrey Hayes), who kept order, planned games and read everyone a story.

During the course of the programme Rod, Jane and Mathew (Corbett, of sooty fame, who was later replaced by Freddy), would come on and sing a song, with Jane sometimes doing a soppy dance. These were the days when Rod had his goatee beard, making him look very similar to Mr. Claypole from Rentaghost. When Rod shaved the beard off it took me a while to realise it was the same bloke! Sometimes a guest would come in and tell the days story, the one that always stuck in my mind was Christopher Lillycrap. Yes, I found his name funny, but at the time I wasn’t aware of the obvious reason why, as a small child it just sounded funny.

I must say I absolutely loathed Bungle, whenever he got hold of Zippy’s head and pulled his zip shut so he couldn’t talk I wanted to smash him in the face with a stickle brick, or shove a weeble down his stupid throat. I delighted in Zippy calling him Bungle Bonce or Bungle Bones when he had said or done something stupid. My favs were Zippy and George, especially when they wore their pinnies to do some painting, or were in bed, George decked out in his curlers even though he didn’t have any hair! Geoffrey never bothered me, unless he was berating Zippy, but generally he was just the ‘dad’ who had to be around to keep some order.

Toward
s the end of its run Rainbow just went down hill and not even the huge talent that is Zippy could rescue it. Now there’s plenty of nostalgia merchandise on the market but nothing compares to being 5 years old and watching it at its peak.

Roobarb and Custard
Roobarb and Custard was a wobbly animation, written by Grange Calverley and produced and directed by Bob Godfrey, with Richard Briers doing the narration and voices of the characters. Roobarb was a green dog who was often bored and therefore went into his shed to invent things. After a lot of banging and shed shaking Roobarb would emerge with his new creation, which was then laughed at by Custard, the pink cat who lived next-door, the birds in the trees and the worms who popped their heads up from the ground.

When Roobarb tried the invention out he would inevitably come a cropper, such as the time he wanted to fly like the birds and so built a pair of wings and a beak. As the birds fell out of the trees from laughing too hard Roobarb launched himself into flight, plummeting straight to earth, where his beak stuck fast in the ground. The twangy guitar based theme tune alone was an absolute classic, sticking in your mind for ages after the programme had finished. Though, I never could understand why Custard was called Custard when he was quite obviously pink!

Chorlton and the Wheelies.
I cannot write about Chortle and the Wheelies without giving you at least a snippet of the theme tune.
‘Jump in, we'll take you for a spin,
and show you round the Wheelie World.
Hop on it's fun to come along,
and take a look at Wheelie World.’

If you’ve ever watched it you’ll know the tune and, like Roobarb and Custard, it’s one that haunts you for a long-time after you’ve heard it. Thus we were introduced to Chorlton-Cum-Hardy, the Happiness Dragon and all his three wheeled chums in Wheelie World. When Chorlton was hatched
his happiness broke the Kettle Witch Fenella’s spell that had frozen all the wheelies, which she hated. It was this happiness that kept Fenella from casting any more spells on the Wheelies, although she tried in every way that she could.

The rulers of the Wheelies were King Otto and Queen Doris, who had help from the Minister of Wheel Estate. There was also the really fast wheelie, Zoomer, and a girl Wheelie called Jenny, as well as a travelling salesman called Angus McWheelie. The green Kettle Witch Fenella, who lived in the Sandlands in a big kettle called Spout Hall, which was painted like a rainbow, was by far the best character. Helping her defeat the Wheelies were the Irish telescope Riley, who watched Wheelie World for her, a spell book called Claptrap Von Schpilldebeanz, who made snide comments when her endeavours failed and was regularly zapped by an outraged Fenella. She also had the Spikers, small black, balls with very long sharp spikes and evil green eyes, and the Toadies, which were toadstools that sprouted all over Wheelie World so Fenella used them as spies.

Chorlton was oblivious to Fenella’s evil intentions for Wheelie World, seeming to quite like her; he often refered to her as a ‘little old lady’, driving Fenella mad with rage, which was a sight to see. Her eyes would screw up tight and she would shake her head, fists clenched, then she would head back to Spout Hall, popping up and down in the landscape as she went. I never wanted the Wheelies to win, although I liked Chorlton, I always thought Fenella was a much better character, even when she was throwing herself about in another hissy fit.

And Fenella having a temper tantrum is where my list ends. There were some programmes that I loved just as much but didn’t include, such as Bagpuss, Mr. Ben, Jackanory, Dr. Who (the Tom Baker years), Animal Magic, Micheal Bentine’s Potty Time, The Tomorrow People, Noggin the Nog, Bod, The Clanger
s, Crystal Tips and Alistair, Mary, Mungo and Midge, Fingerbobs, Itsy and Bitsy, Follyfoot, The Magic Roundabout and Monkey. But I think most of these are programmes that have become very well known, even to the generations that weren’t born when they were on the air, due to the nostalgia wave for Seventies children’s TV that seems to be sweeping the country.

I doubt we’ll ever see Music Time merchandise in the shops or the DVD release of Hickory House, but at least I remember them, and the hours of enjoyment and pleasure they gave me. So now it’s time to crawl out from under your blanket, wipe the biscuit crumbs and hot chocolate froth from your mouth, and, taking tight hold of dolly or teddy's hand, climb the wooden hill for a nap. Night-night children. Night-night.

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