Countdown to Look-In: The Comics of 1971

 Part Two: The Space-age Comic

By early 1971, TV21 was failing. What had once been the most prestigious comic in Britain, with the best artists, and content sourced from some of the most popular television titles of the day had been reduced to a travesty: Marvel characters abounded (fine in Marvel, but unwelcome in TV21); original material was dull and derivative, the page size was the smallest of any British comic, and the paper was cheap. Of the science-fiction content that had once been its raison d’etre, only Star Trek remained, and its one-time artist Mike Noble was long gone, having vanished through the time-barrier to Look-In. There was no earthly reason to carry on having TV21, and Look-In had been its de facto replacement for me. But within weeks a new comic emerged, a comic that not only featured UFO (plus Dr. Who to boot), but which promised its readers nothing less than the entire Gerry Anderson universe. Countdown had arrived...

With its funky futuristic masthead, cute ‘reverse page numbering’ gimmick and science fiction/ science fact content, Countdown was an impressive new arrival, at least from where I was standing. And they had me taped from day one by promising all of those Gerry Anderson series. They couldn’t all fit into one edition, of course, and instead, Countdown would rotate new comic strips of every Anderson series from Fireball XL5 to date, mixing serial stories with ‘Countdown Complete’ adventures – these being self-contained stories told within a single issue, their pages spread evenly throughout the comic.

I'd pitched hard for Look-In and had it bought for me from day one. Having bagged this prize, however, I was out of luck when Countdown came along. All things being equal, our mum decided that this new comic would be bought for my brother. Which didn't really matter, because I still got to read it, but it did mean that the groovy space wallchart that came free with issue one would hang above my brother's bed, not mine. Still, I had my Magpie studio cut-outs to play with (Look-In’s enticements with issues one and two), and the ‘Star Wheel’ free gift out of isssue three. I’m fairly certain they’re still around somewhere...

Like Look-In, Countdown was heavily promoted via TV advertising: indeed, this was probably how we found out about it. I'd been getting its sibling title TV Comic on a semi regular basis since 1969, so it's likely we would have seen some promotional items in there; but it was the TV ad, with its clips of Gerry Anderson's UFO that really sold Countdown to us. At last it became clear why Look-In had no Gerry Anderson content: Countdown had pre-empted the lot!

Countdown arrived in our house on Saturday 13^th February, 1971. It was immediately clear to me that I’d backed the wrong horse with Look-In: this was much more my kind of comic. I don’t think there was a single item in that first edition that didn’t have some kind of appeal for me, with the possible exception of the titular strip – of which, more later.

Issue One featured a complete UFO story, whose interstitial photographs look like a nod back to TV21. The UFO artwork was, sadly, not of the first rank, coming from the capable, but uninspired Jon Davis, whose art I recognised from the by now defunct Joe 90 comic. Crediting the artists was a laudable development in Countdown, as British comic artists were very rarely acknowledged in print, and only a very few were allowed even to sign their pages. Elsewhere in that same issue there were two very nice Thunderbirds pages from Don Harley (his tight, realistic style always found favour with me), a double page colour Dr. Who from Harry Lindfield (great art, but his style was too loose for my hyper-critical 9-year-old self), another page of Jon Davis (Joe 90) and some very rushed Captain Scarlet art from John Cooper that looked more like a rough visual (I know a lot of comic fans seem to like John Cooper, but I’ve hated his art from the first time I saw it in TV21).

There were two more colour pages inside that first issue, and these were given over to the comic’s sole original creation – Countdown. Featuring spaceship designs licensed from the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, and some extremely stylish art from comic strip giant John M Burns, Countdown looked and read like a feature one might have expected to find in some hard-nosed sci-fi periodical aimed at a much older readership. By comparison, the Gerry Anderson fare seemed naïve. Countdown told the story of the titular ship’s return to Earth after a long voyage of discovery. Unfortunately, the planet is now in the grip of a Hitlerian dictator, William Costra, who orders the craft’s destruction, and the first episode swiftly sets the scene for an ongoing struggle between the Countdown crew and the forces of Costra’s evil empire. Sounds familiar? I wonder if Terry Nation ever saw a copy... ?

Today, I can see John Burns’ artwork for the genius it undoubtedly was, but back in 1971, my opinion was more equivocal. Burns’ work seemed to set the bar for art in Countdown, with an almost psychedelic style that employed hard coloured shadows and innovative line work that made the characters or their faces seem to merge into their backgrounds. If Top of the Pops had made an episode of Dr. Who, it would probably have looked like this. Similar techniques were employed by Harry Lindfield and Gerry Haylock, whose colour UFO strip appeared from issue 2. I liked Haylock’s artwork a lot – his work on Land of the Giants for the Joe 90 comic had been superb, resulting in strips that made the TV series look rubbish by comparison. But whereas Haylock and Lindfield mixed realistic and psychedelic effects on a single page, and generally erred more on the side of realistic depictions and colouring, John Burns took more chances. Faces were seldom flesh-toned, and his pages often had a dark, green/pink/magenta vibe suggestive of a black mass held in a funky discotheque. For me, this was several steps too far into the realm of experimentalism, and accordingly, I tended to skip the Countdown strip.

The mature tone of the Countdown storyline was echoed by the comic’s approach to editorial, a sizeable chunk of which (in issue 1, at any rate), came courtesy of the editor of the UK journal Flying Saucer Review. Features on space exploration were clearly intended for consumption by budding James Burkes, and in general, there was a technocratic tone to the proceedings that probably hadn’t been seen in British comics since the glory days of Eagle. TV21 had certainly never patronised its readers, but it didn’t take them half so seriously as did Countdown...

It wasn’t all rocket science, though: Countdown found room for a single humour page every week, in the form of Dastardly and Muttley in their Flying Machines. Printed in blue and black line and wash, this was a splendidly-illustrated strip, perfectly in tune with the original cartoons. Ironically, though, the artist went uncredited, while lesser contributors were getting their names in print...

Countdown’s second issue saw an editorial mis-step in the decision to feature Gerry Anderson’s seldom seen The Secret Service as its complete story. Even at the time, I found myself wondering what they were playing at. The one redeeming feature of this story is that it did what the TV series itself had been incapable of, by supplying an origin story for Father Unwin and his ‘minimiser’. This was probably deemed necessary, given that most ITV regions had passed on the series and new readers would have understandably wondered what the hell was going on. I’d watched The Secret Service and derived a certain amount of enjoyment from it, but it certainly wasn’t Thunderbirds; and to feature it so prominently so early in the run of a new comic must have been close to editorial suicide. Jon Davis’ art didn’t help, either: his Father Unwin was unrecognisable as the real world or even puppet version of Stanley Unwin, looking more like the bespectacled half of avant garde artists Gilbert and George...

After four issues, Countdown’s stylish masthead changed colour from blue and purple to a less attractive red/ magenta scheme. Red has always been seen as a classic ‘stand out’ colour for comic and magazine covers, so the change is perhaps understandable: but I always preferred the look of those first four editions. Editor Dennis Hooper didn’t go back on his Gerry Anderson promise though, and as the weeks went on, Countdown found room for every series from Fireball XL5 up to present: with, it has to be said, some mixed results.

The covers of Countdowns Nos 1 through 3 had been excellent, featuring photographs of UFO, a solar prominence and Jon Pertwee’s Dr. Who respectively. Thereafter, science-based images prevailed, with an odd mix of press agency material featuring Nasa astronauts, hot air balloons, formula one racing cars and a vintage London omnibus with the result that Countdown began to look less like a comic for kids and more like a niche magazine for men of a certain age. Someone must have said something, because after a time, the comic strip content, which had previously been confined to the inner pages, began to break out onto the covers. Someone may also have noted that, with its sci-fi and hard science pitch, Countdown was failing to find an audience. Interest in space and science fiction had fallen off a cliff after the first few Nasa moon missions. The general public, and that includes the average comic reader, quickly began to accept the space programme as commonplace. You’ve seen one man land on the moon, you’ve seen them all. You’ve even seen them abort and turn back in a nail-biting drama that makes a smashing film... Science fiction had been all well and good in the early days of the space race, but science fact was taking the sheen off the average space opera, and it would take the phenomenon of Star Wars, still six years in the future, to remind everyone that deep down, they still liked spaceships, robots and ray guns...

None of this cut any ice in 1971, and in the autumn of the year, after some 34 editions, Countdown began a slow process of reinventing itself. The Gerry Anderson and science fiction content was still present, but was now elbowed out of the spotlight by those two playboy adventurers Brett Sinclair and Danny Wilde, known collectively as The Persuaders! This was the big television event of autumn ‘71, and Countdown quickly took it on board; one might imagine them beating off Look-In’s Alan Fennell with a big stick to secure the rights. The inclusion of a non-SF strip was the first sign of a sea change at Countdown, which soon began to include the tagline ‘for TV Action’ as part of its masthead. The change would finally come on April 1, 1972, with a de facto relaunch that saw Countdown ‘absorbed’ by an all-new title: TV Action...

Countdown to Look-In: The Comics of 1971

Part One: The Junior TV Times

For me, 1971 was the last great year for comics. I was only 10, which seems a shame. Sure, I had yet to discover the likes of Dan Dare and Tintin, but I’d be dipping into the past in both cases, and 1971 was the last year in which I found myself in tune with what was happening in contemporary comics. And I doubt anyone would argue that the two new arrivals that landed at the newsagents’ a shade over fifty years ago were anything less than classics...

After the massive disappointment of TV21, which had evolved into an unrecognisable sub-Marvel clone during the preceding twelve months, it was welcome news to my nine-year-old self when a new TV-based comic arrived on the scene in the first week of January 1971. Our mum had been buying the TV Times every week for a year or more, and I had come to regard it almost as one of my regular comics; so if there was ever a target market for a ‘Junior TV Times’ as the new arrival styled itself, then I was it.

I’d received my first ever diary at Christmas 1970, but was at somewhat of a loss as to what I should write in it. Here was an event worthy of note, and, in anticipation, I marked down Friday 8th January in red biro: ‘Get new magasine (sic) comic LOOK -IN’. The entry was struck through when the first edition arrived, unexpectedly, a day early on Thursday 7^th.

The idea of a Junior TV Times most definitely appealed to me, even if the cover star of issue one, Tony Bastable, was part of a programme I didn’t even watch. Thames TV’s Magpie – essentially, Blue Peter in loon pants – was a show we’d dipped in and out of but never really took to. It seemed somehow too much a product of its time, too seventies and, worse, too aware of the fact. Nevertheless, Bastable’s cover star status wasn’t about to put me off the excitement of a brand new comic.

Look-In didn't actually feature many of my TV favourites of the time. I thought it odd that they couldn’t have found room for Gerry Anderson’s latest, UFO, which was a staple of ITV’s Wednesday night schedule here in the ATV region. There was, of course, an excellent reason for that, which we shall examine a little later. What Look-In did find room for in that first edition was a comic strip of adventure series Freewheelers (we never watched it), photo features on Survival (boring) and Junior Showtime (kids’ variety show – horrors!), and a faintly irate column penned by cover star Tony Bastable. None of this interested me.

On the plus side, there was a decent (and funny) comic strip version of Please Sir! and an enjoyable single-page comic escapade featuring Leslie Crowther, although not based on any specific Crowther TV show. And towards the back, you got to see what was being shown across all the ITV regions with a short-form TV listing: probably the only time such an item had ever been included in a children’s comic. Look-In’s big draw, and the only colour comic strip in that first edition was a 2-page story based on the kids’ adventure serial Timeslip, then mid-way through its 26-episode run. The story started with the intriguing premise of time-travelling teens Liz and Simon arriving in what appeared to be a pre-historic jungle, then discovering a contemporary artefact – a telephone receiver – in a swamp. Not so much time slip as slime tip...

Issue 2 added the unappealing prospect of a piratical comic strip, Wreckers at Dead Eye, which was apparently based on a Thames Television series, although I'd never heard of it, and I wasn’t interested in costume drama of any description. Over the coming weeks, there was a good deal of tinkering with the layout, as features exchanged pages, and new ideas were tried out. Unusually, there was a complete absence of advertising until issue 5, which also included the first page of readers' letters (suggesting a 4-week production schedule). Oddly, none of these readers' missives appeared in the Tony Bastable ‘Backchat’ feature, despite his issue one promise to do just that. Bastable, in fact, proved to be an irascible correspondent, given to venting steam on topics such as his hatred of school dinners, and generally using his page as an excuse for a bit of a moan. His complaining sarcasm can't have cut much ice with readers or his editor (former Gerry Anderson scriptwriter Alan Fennell) because the aptly-named Bastable was soon dumped in favour of the more avuncular Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart.

Despite its curate’s egg contents, I stuck with Look-In. An early disappointment was the demotion of Timeslip to black and white, with Mike Noble now reassigned to the horsey strip Follyfoot, adapted from the popular TV series. Noble excelled at drawing horses (an an artist one either can or cannot draw a horse convincingly), so he must have been happy with this new assignment. In retrospect, though, Follyfoot, with its strong appeal to girls, was a worrying foretaste of things to come.

On the Buses was a welcome arrival during the summer of 1971, with superb colour artwork from Harry North... so good he got to sign his pages. The scripts, however, were a bit of a let-down. Clearly, the smut and sexism of the original could have no place in a comic for children (even though we watched the series), but in place of bawdy humour, the comic version opted for melodrama, with Stan and Jack’s exploits including rescuing children from a burning building. Even at the time, I felt this wasn't quite right. Look-In’s other sitcom strips (Dr. In Charge, The Fenn Street Gang) were generally a lot funnier, and the On the Buses strip quite often felt uncomfortably misjudged.

From issue 40 onwards, the photographic covers which had echoed those of Look-In’s grown-up companion paper the TV Times, were suddenly replaced by paintings. Most of these came courtesy of prolific movie poster artist Arnaldo Putzu, whose likenesses were never less than stunning (I suspect he used a Grant enlarger*), but whose slick, light-over-dark ‘scumbled’ acrylic painting technique didn't much appeal to me at the time. I liked artwork to look properly ‘finished’, but Putzu's covers had the slickness of art studio visuals. Brilliant work, but I was too young to appreciate it properly.

With the Putzu covers, Look-In had founds its house style and no longer looked like a scaled-down version of the TV Times. His artwork was still dominating the covers when I baled out in Januray 1973, but he would continue to work for the title for many years to come. Look-In itself, however, was slowly shifting towards a different target audience – pre-teen girls – and by the autumn of 1972 it had lost the universal appeal that had been there from day one. Pop star covers began to feature with increasing frequency, still springing from the easel of Mr. Putzu, but there was only so much David Cassidy an 11-year-old boy could put up with. When he began to feature in his own series of comic strip adventures, I saw the writing on the wall. It was, in fact, the promise of yet another Cassidy cover in January 1973 that had me telling our mum that I didn’t want to be bought Look-In any more.

Look-In itself would continue for more than ten years, a remarkable achievement for any comic launched during the 1970s. Sadly, the scenario in the juvenile publishing world was all too often the same: optimistic launch, followed by months of editorial uncertainty, new stories, different features, new artists, and when all else failed, absorption into a more successful ‘companion’ paper. In its original incarnation, Look-In was clearly not finding an audience, and the shift towards pop and more female-oriented content probably saved it. Boys mostly either didn’t care for comics, or preferred the bloodthirsty war stories and shoot-ups that were routinely served up by titles I never chose to explore. I was evidently cut from a different cloth – the ideal reader for a Junior TV Times. There just weren’t enough of us...

(* Grant Enlarger: a kind of rostrum camera with a hood used by artists of yore to enlarge and trace photographs as part of the now obsolete practise of paste-up.)

 

Captain Scarlet was no mug: memories of Easter 1968

 

There are certain moments in time that remain clear and vivid over fifty years later. I don’t mean historic or memorable days and events; in fact, I’m talking about the exact opposite – moments of tranquil normality that for some reason get burned into the mind forever. I explored one such moment in this blog several years ago (see ‘Daydream – a Time Detective Story’) wherein I managed to narrow down a vivid memory to a specific date and time. This time around, I’m going to start with another recollection and work outward to explore the wider pop cultural landscape of the period, or rather, those aspects of it that were engaging my imagination.

We start on a bright, blowy Monday morning. There’s washing dancing on the line and the brilliant yellow bloom of forsythia in the garden border. In my recollection, there’s also a glimpse of sunlit brickwork which means I’d gone into the garden to play. It was the first day of the school holiday, I’d just had breakfast and the radio was playing in the back room. I suspect it was the Jimmy Young show. I know the exact song that was playing, because I was hearing it for the first time – and to this day, that single evokes a Proustian connection back to that specific morning.

I can even remember what I was thinking: this being the school holiday, it felt a bit weird to be around the house when our mum was doing the weekly wash, which probably explains my wish to play outside in the back garden. I probably had a game of Captain Scarlet in mind, because the same memory trail connects to an image of a white plastic Spectrum cap gun which always figured in such games: and Captain Scarlet was still on its first run on TV at the time.

Captain Scarlet plus forsythia puts us squarely in the early spring of 1968. The record on the radio narrows the focus even further, for it was ‘The Captain of Your Ship’ by Reparata and the Delrons. It struck me as an unusual title for a song, and I still remember the mental picture it created with its nautical sound effects. The single had entered the UK top 20 in the chart of April 3 1968, so it would have been getting regular airplay the following week.

My mum doing the washing provides a further clue: our mum being something of a traditionalist, washing day was invariably a Monday (there is an historic precedent for this, as housewives in industrial towns favoured Monday mornings for hanging out their washing when the air was at its cleanest after the factories had been closed on Sundays). All of these clues lead me to the conclusion that the day I remember so vividly is Monday April 8, 1968, a likely commencement date for the two-week Easter break (Easter Sunday falling that year on April 14).

As we’ve already seen, Captain Scarlet loomed large in my imagination at this time, with the series still on air. The Captain’s exploits also featured on the cover of TV21, my regular weekly comic at this time. On Wednesday 10 April, I would have seen ‘Green Edition’ 169 with a cover story that saw the Spectrum team forced to use antique aircraft to counter the latest Mysteron threat. Elsewhere in that same issue, Thunderbirds was nearing the conclusion of a quite insane storyline that had begun with two murders, seen the destruction of Thunderbirds 2 and 3* and would conclude with The Hood trying to saw the top off Tracy Island. No, really. One wonders if the editor ever cast an eye over scripts like this. The story was clearly the work of TV21 writer Scott Goodall, who had been smashing up hardware in the comic since at least 1966, when Fireball XL5 got memorably shot to pieces. Nonsense like this had a strong influence on my own comic ‘creations’ of this era which almost always saw the hero craft crash and burn in spectacular explosions rendered in jagged stabs of pencil crayon or felt-tip pen.

[* Alan was piloting TB3 when it was blown to pieces on lift-off. The story never explained how (or indeed if) he survived...]

Luckily, more benign comics were also available: on this same week, my brother and myself would also have been bought Fleetway’s Teddy Bear (featuring artwork by the minor comic celebrity Jesus Blasco), whose contents had remained reassuringly static since its launch in September 1963. Alongside this came the similarly-themed Playhour, whose centre spread story featured the adventures of ‘Num-Num and his Funny Family’, a collection of nominative-deterministic kitties with names like ‘Never-shut-the-door puss cat’, scripted by Teddy Bear editor Barbara Hayes (an authoress of whom the internet has nothing whatsoever to say...) A more recent comic arrival was Playland, whose covers featured Sooty and Sweep who, along with Harry Corbett, had launched the comic in a TV ad campaign: ‘TV time’s over... but now the fun begins,’ Mr Corbett assured us. Playland’s contents focused mostly on TV characters who were not already contracted to appear in companion paper Pippin.

So much for comics: what else had spring of 1968 to offer? On the toy front, Corgi were rolling out a range of models featuring ‘built-in golden jacks’ which could be prised open to allow for removal of the wheels. It was a short-lived fad, limited to a handful of models, but I clearly remember being bought the Rover 2000 in this series, launched in April, which carried a spare wheel on the boot. I still have the model, in mint condition. Dinky, meanwhile, were slowly bringing their range of Captain Scarlet vehicles to market, with serial numbers that no doubt have caused some confusion further down the line. Model No. 104, the SPV, had been rushed out in time for Christmas 1967, but despite featuring in advertisements in the pages of TV21, there had been no sign of the bright red Spectrum patrol car (No. 103) which finally made it to our local toyshop in the first months of 1968, along with the MSV (No. 105).

Captain Scarlet merchandise was everywhere, even in the local ice cream van, operated under the ‘Tonibell’ brand, which was our principal source for the bubble gum card series available at this time. My brother and myself were close to completing two sets of the 66 individual cards, a feat which meant buying a whole lot of bubble gum, none of which was ever put to its intended use (I hated the stuff and was never able to blow bubbles with it). From the same source came the Tonibell ‘mini-ball’ ice cream, a popular treat around this time, which consisted of a hollow plastic tennis (or cricket?) ball filled with ice cream. Once the ice cream had been eaten, the top of the container could be clipped back on to create an extremely light weight ball that wasn’t much use for anything besides throwing around in the back garden.

Captain Scarlet wasn’t above a bit of ice-cream action either, and the indestructible agent had lent his name to promote Lyons Maid’s new ‘Orbit’ ice lolly, a creation of two ice cream flavours topped with milk chocolate, which, with its orange, pink and brown colour scheme looked every inch an artefact of 1968... The good Captain was also to be found fronting packets of Sugar Smacks, a bowl of which I had almost certainly consumed on the morning where we began our story, whilst listening to Reparata and co. I’m not sure I ever really liked Sugar Smacks very much – even as a child, I found their honey sweetness a bit too much for my taste. But as always, there had been bribery involved: a set of small, snap-together models of Spectrum vehicles was on offer, with one in every special packet. ‘S.I.G’ for Sugar Smacks indeed. I remember getting a lot of Spectrum Helicopters but no Patrol Car, Angel Interceptor or MSV. Unbelievably for such flimsy plastic artefacts, some of them are still extant...

Back then, you could hardly open a packet of anything without some kind of free gift falling out. Most ice lollies had a picture card embedded in the wrapper (and sometimes in the lolly itself), whilst Brooke Bond were keeping up the tradition of giving away nicely illustrated and informative picture cards in packets of leaf tea, a trend that had begun in the mid-1950s. Their offering at this time was a set called ‘British Costume’ – never a favourite of mine, and not a patch on previous series like ‘Transport Through the Ages’ or, best of all, ‘Tropical Birds’.

I was a few years away from collecting stamps on anything like a serious scale, but they were regularly featured on Blue Peter, and our mum had bought me a few from the wild flowers range of spring 1967. By Easter 1968 there had been no commemorative issues since Christmas, and the next set, launched on April 29^th would be British Bridges – of which I saw only Tarr Steps, which our mum saved for me from an envelope.

With Captain Scarlet enjoying such ubiquity, one might be tempted to ask if I was watching anything else at all on television? A glance through BBC Genome’s Radio Times database reveals the answers: Blue Peter was still a staple of Mondays and Thursdays. Easter week saw the first of the ‘Littlenose’ stories on Jackanory, a popular whimsical series featuring a junior cave man, which I remember enjoying. Mondays saw the continuing saga of White Horses, a series which I watched regularly, despite having so special interest in our equine chums. The memorable theme tune had entered the charts on April 10.

Captain Scarlet had annexed Tuesday afternoons, whilst Fridays on BBC1 saw a ‘Crackerjack’ clone in the form of Whistle Stop, a kids’ variety show fronted by the avuncular Roger Whittaker. I remember being particularly taken with a daft white rabbit glove puppet called Theodore, who spoke in a kind of neo-flowerpot jibberish with occasional flashes of proper English. Frightened by a vacuum cleaner, Theodore excitedly told his mentor, Larry Parker: ‘dor-dorior-dor-dor-dorior went brrrrr!’, a phrase which, as you can see, embedded itself in my mind forever. Whistle Stop also featured an audience participation game called ‘Paddle Whack’ the exact details of which escape me, other than that it featured two teams and that they were each equipped with paddles, as one might use to propel a canoe. What they did with them is lost in the mists of time, although the Radio Times listing includes a character ‘Mr. Wacky Jacky’ played by actor Jack Haig who sounds as if he had some involvement in the procedings. Perhaps it’s best not to probe any further...

One evening I didn’t much care for was Saturday. Dr. Who had been a no-go area since its inception (I was scared of the music, never mind the Daleks), but we turned over afterwards to be confronted by a line-up which, at Easter 1968 included The Monkees, Dee Time and Daktari, none of whom appealed to me at all and who collectively felt like a pall over Saturday evening. That may be hard to credit, but I strongly remember the sinking feeling I used to have hearing the themes to The Monkees or Daktari (both of which would soon be featured as Corgi models). I liked the Monkees well enough when the series was repeated in the 1970s, but I didn’t care for them at all in 1968.

At this time, children’s television was mostly confined to early evenings and weekday lunchtimes, so the appearance of a show on Saturday lunchtimes held a certain novelty value. The series in question was called Whoosh! and seems to have been a more grown-up, hipper relative of Playschool, featuring amongst others, bearded Rick Jones whose musical numbers were one of Playschool’s high spots around this time. We tuned in for Whoosh! when it got started, but I don’t think we stuck around for long. My memory is of three young trendies in an empty studio with a dressing-up box, having adventures which relied more on imagination than budget. For me, it was the television equivalent of an Aztec chocolate bar: intriguing for five minutes, but a bit hard to swallow for much longer.

I started this entry with a pop song, proof, I think of the power of music to stimulate memory. Pop songs, by their ephemeral nature, seem particularly good at this, for in many cases, one hears them a lot for a short space of time (during their tenure in the hit parade) following which they may go for years, decades even, without airplay. A glimpse at the chart for Easter week of 1968 reveals many songs which are inextricably connected for me and which, when juxtaposed – especially in the presence of other artefacts from the same era – can create a strong sense of time dislocation, a rekindling of the ‘zeitgeist’ such as it appeared to me at the time. The Beatles’ ‘Lady Madonna’ had been number one, dropping back to No. 4 in the chart of April 10 wherein we also discover Tom Jones’ hystrionic Delilah (a song I hated then as now), Ester and Abi Ofarim’s ‘Cinderella Rockefeller’ (likewise), Roger Miller’s ‘Little Green Apples’ (passable) and Cilla Black’s ‘Step Inside Love’, a song which has always given me ‘Proustian rushes’ of Tonibell mini-balls and Captain Scarlet bubble gum cards.

Put all the above in a mental blender and what comes out for me is essence of Easter 1968. Yet of Easter Sunday itself, I have scant recollection beyond receiving a specific chocolate egg which came inside a painted mug that I used for years until the handle came off. No prizes for guessing which pop cultural icon graced this piece of tableware... yep, it was Captain Scarlet. He may have been indestructible, but his mug was not... 

Your playlist for this blog...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2rPrEJAHPs 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jtCNbERKvMs 

plus some further reading: https://www.tonibell99.co.uk/history