"DAD, DAD, THEY'VE LANDED ON THE MOON N' ITS UPSIDE DOWN !!"

Long ago in the days of the old steam television, as the wonderful SPIKE MILLIGAN(spine Milligna, the well known typing error.) might've said. The steam telly was a huge wooden box full of valves which took about an hour n' a half to heat up and display a crappy old black and white picture on a tiny screen. The buttons were huge clunky things that you had to twist with both hands to turn channels, never mind turn on or off. It was just as well that there was only 2 channels in those long gone days as the levels of hernias would've been a lot higher. Do you remember horizontal and vertical hold; 405 and 625 lines, etc. Ahh in the days of digital telly, this is how proper tellys worked. But it was on one of these steaming box of valves that a nine year old(just, 5 days past the birthday)space mad, schoolboy watched the most mindblowing thing he'd ever seen. The MOON LANDING.

I would wait with mounting excitment every Tuesday night for the paperboy to deliver the TV21 comic, with all the GERRY ANDERSON-based comic strips exquisitly drawn on quality glossy paper ,a wonderful comic. Telly had PATRICK TROUGHTON as DR WHO; LOST IN SPACE; VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA; TIME TUNNEL; So, rockets, space and science fiction was 'it'. So, when the APOLLO boys started their 'stuff' it was great. I always remember being most excited when APOLLO 8 went off around the moon for the first time. I was stunned, and still am by the photos of the moon and the approaching darkness of mountains and crater walls as they orbited the darkside and then earthrise. A few months later PATRICK MOORE and JAMES BURKE are talking us, in great lengths through this grainy lousy telly(live from the the moon') ,mostly black, with a white chunk,at the top of the screen. The picture was,it turns out, upside down."Dad,dad,they've landed and the moons upside down"... I pondered on the possibility that they had landed at the south pole,or the moons bottom. Then the picture rightened up and cleared up a little and NEIL ARMSTRONG stepped on the moon. And a 9- year old schoolboy busting a gut with excitment, in his grey school sweater and black school shorts on a bright sunny morning was yelling for his dad ."Dad,Dad, he's walking on the moon!!!"When i got to school we we're moon skipping around the playground for weeks.

Even today the conspiracy theorists are still blathering on about shadows; Reflections in visors; Flags waving; Multiple shadows; Lack of blast craters and on and on. As i've said before the yanks cant keep a secret among a few people for long ,never mind thousands for 40- odd years. It must be frustrating for the astronauts. I had to laugh when i read about BUZZ ALDRIN giving somebody who claimed he'd never gone to the moon, a 'smack in the gob.'Good on yer, Buzz. I've been watching programmes over the last week or so and some of the re-digitallised lunar footage is ,to me ,truly mindblowing, after all this time .The 9-year old schoolboy is now a 49 year old schoolboy. And to complete this nostalgia fest. I recently mentioned DANNI and DISHI(over on the links)These are the people who supply the comics on disc. They sent me a disc with all the old COUNTDOWN comics on.Countdown was a sort of extension of the TV21. But they used to feature a lot about the APOLLO programme. I remember the first issue with , GERRY ANDERSON'S ,U.F.O.Thunderbirds, Fireball, Stingray;JON PERTWEE'S Dr Who, and stuff ,but with a huge free gift. A poster that you had to add stickers over the weeks to, to show the whole Apollo moon shots n' stuff. I, of course filled it up and it held pride of place on my bedroom wall ,right up there with the BRUCE LEE posters.