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 29th 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
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