Rising Stars, The Blog!

Television Glory Days

         Fun Fact Friday! On this day in 1926, a Scottish inventor named John Baird demonstrated a pictorial transmission machine called the television. Do you remember seeing your first television...the one your parents had when you were a kid? What were some of your favourite shows? Do you still watch any of the old programs you enjoyed as a teenager?          

I don't remember exactly when we got our first television but the programmes were all in black and white at first. I was only a child so all the programmes I remember are children's programmes.

I watched Bill and Ben, about two men made of pots and a flower called Weed. There was Andy Pandy, a boy puppet in pyjamas with his teddy bear; both in Black and White. Later I know we had a colour television, then I watched Trumpton, about a town with a fire station and Pogle's Wood about a family who lived in the woods with a dog called Spot. Then there was the Herb Garden, where each character was a herb, eg. Lady Rosemary, Sir Basil etc. Mr Benn was a man who went into a little shop, entered the changing rooms, changing into costumes and went on adventures. Ivor the Engine was a little Welsh steam engine and his daily stories, of course alongside this was Thomas the Tank Engine, as many of us know, the story of a whole host of Engines. The Clangers were little animals who lived on Button Moon, spoke a language of their own, yet somehow you knew what they were saying to each other; The Moomins were strange animals too, they didn't speak at all. There were blue Smurfs and of course, there was Jackanory, a familiar face would tell us a story each day.


The Clangers, The Moomins and The Smurfs are still on now, I've watched them with friends' children, but of course children's programmes have moved on and I doubt if many here on WDC will recognise many of these programmes as they were distinctly British!