THE TELEVISION HOW IT HAS PINNED US TO THE COUCH FOR YEARS EVEN IF ITS RUBBISH!

Being a child of the 60's.....i grew up straining my eyes at a tiny screen inside a huge 2ft wide box that was 4ft deep, due to thosemassive cathode ray tubes and glass tubes that took about 20 minutes to warm up once the set had been turned on. The actual act of turning on those early sets was a risky operation as the switches were mainly clunky knobs. The twisting of those clunky knobs was a hernia -producing task.

The on off was one huge clunk, but the channel selector was a  mass of clunks, well a few as there was only two channels , the good ol 'beeb' n' ITV. Later ,of course came the intellectual odd one ,BEEB2. In those old days the pictures were not so much black n' white, but grey n' grey. I seem to remember lots of cowboys and American detectives and British cops as in Z-Cars with its distinctive theme tune which they still play at the Everton ground at Goodison park.

Lots of Irwin Allen stuff  like 'Voyage to the bottom of the sea'; 'Lost in space', but we beat them when a certain white haired bad tempered time lord in a telephone box arrived quietly , but then exploded with the pepperpot Daleks! With its distorted blobby opening titles and etherial music with hissing and ashmatic wheezing was wonderful and at the time terrifying with the famous possible urban myth that people hid behind the settee when the good Doctor and various lousy special effected monsters were on. The fact that you could hide behind the settee shows how things have changed. The settee was in the middle of the room close up to the telly. Not over against the far wall where it doesn't matter how far away you are from the 76 inch flat screen telly on the far side of the room. Even if you could hide behind the settee the kids wouldn't ,they've been spoiled by wonderful realer than reality special CGI effects the wonderful fear the imagination could instill has dissappeared and gone.

Another favourite of mine which many dont remember was a telly version of the 'Dirty Dozen', but there was only four in 'Garrisons Gorillas!'....Always behind enemy lines in German uniforms blasting away with Schmeisser machine guns. I got the DVD's and like many revisits to your past , it never quite hits the hoped for nostalgic G-Spot. One that did ,i still love was the spy series with the meanest assassin of all, Edward Woodward as 'Callan', still brilliant.

Boyhood excitment peaked with Apollo 8 going around the back of the moon, then Apollo 11 landing on the moon. At this stage i was a space mad nut thanks to a certain Gerry Anderson and his puppet and string Supermarination series of Thunderbirds, Stingray,Superca,Fireball XL5 and my favourite the real life UFO.

The clunky knobs were replaced by swimming pool diving board-like press buttons and ,wonderful colour! In those long never to be forgotten days we used to go outside to play, but if there was a big film on ,like on a Saturday evening we'd go home to watch it ,as stuff didn't get repeated very often. so if you missed it ,you waited for years. I remember the excitment of the first Bond film on telly.

We never had BBC2 for a long time and on a Monday evening at 8 o'clock, ITV had news in 'World in Action ,whilst the 'BEEB' had Panorama, yet another news show, but on BEEB2 which we could hear, but not see they used to have 'The High Chaperal', or Alias Smith and Jones'. Then 'Oh joy be unrestrained we finally got BEEB2  with a picture so lots of cowies n' indians and no more news and current affairs.

As the years and tellys evolved the main drawback about colour telly was that colour telly was a lot clearer and the effects which were crappy in the days of black n' white were missed , but not with colour, remember the Jon Pertwee Doctor Who onwards for many years and the great soap 'Crossroads', a Birmimgham motel made of cardboard.

Then came the video and you could keep all the programmes in the growing heap of tapes that we all have and i'm afraid to admit still have. All the action and adventure dried up and replaced by soaps and game shows were ,if you were lucky you'd win a toaster. More channels flooded in with the onset of sky.

Nowadays the millions of channels we flick through with our very handy and looseable hand sized remote controls, have mainly repeats of stuff thats been on twice that same day. These days people dont want to be in a band or musicians playing gigs, etc, they just want to be pop stars ,so singing into their hairbrush is enough to get them onto the talent spotting shows that infest our telly weekend nights as in The X-Factor. The talent moved from singing to dancing to ice slating and everything is geared to 'the Celebrity!', a person whose just famous for being famous. The calendar doesn't chart the year anymore ,its what celebrity talent show is on ,Strictly Comes Dancing'; X-Factor and 'I'm a celebrity get me out of here!'

A very odd thing is the amount of adverts for training and sport training DVD's as we all need our core developed and a 6-pack ,by dancing to the instructions coming from your telly as you dance or shadow box on the mat in front of the set.....Very odd!

We're all spoiled for choice ,but unlike in the days of 2 channels were every day was different , now we have hundreds of channels all the same ,shite!

THESE DAYS WE EAT OCTOPUS'S IN POSH RESTAURANTS, REMEMBER ON OLD TELLY WHEN THEY WERE HUGE IN 'VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA AND COULD WRESTLE NUCLEAR SUBMARINES TO THE BOTTOM OF THE OCEAN!

These days we go to a restaurant and eat bits of squid and octopus for dinner or fried tentacles. I remember when i wuz 'nobbut a lad' when i thought that all those tentacle clad wee beasties were huge monsters dwelling beneath the waves as in the 60's there was a lot of science fiction on the telly and 'everything went.

I first saw my monster tentacle comming out of a steamy bog on the PLANET SKARO in a very early episode of DOCTOR WHO with the wonderful WILLIAM HARTNELL in them far flung black and white days. Planet Skaro was the home of THE DALEKS ,as if you didn't know. The tentacle came out of the bog clutched a good guy ,a race called THE THALS who were going to rescue the Doctor and his grandaughter SUSAN. The poor Thal was dragged into the gurgling bog

VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA was another classic sci-fi show about a n incredible super nuclear submarine called SEAVIEW. The Seaview would sail under the seven seas saving the world from aliens and monsters every week. Like most 60's series , because of the success of the 'camp' attitude of 'BATMAN' all the other series veered towards the 'camp!' All kinds of ridiculous monsters, robots, killer dolls, walking ,man eating plants ,witches, wizards, etc were dragged into ruin 'VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA'; 'LOST IN SPACE'  and some ,originally very promising series. But the SEAVIEW being underwater was prone to these massive be-tentacled creatures which'd wrestle the worlds mightiest nuclear sub to the bottom of the ocean. As this was happening there was always the crew getting thrown from side to side with clouds of sparks bursting out of bleeping flashing spectacular control panels. I seem to remember the ships bosses CAPTAIN CRANE and ADMIRAL NELSON get the engineer or 'SPARKS' to  boost an electric charge through the hull which would electrocute the octopus causing it to release them then they'd finish it off with a couple of torpedoes in its tentacle junction, tat would normally do the job before the end theme and the adverts could come on to a safe world again.

Another favourite for giant octopi....Was the wonderful GERRY ANDERSON creation  about anothe super sub 'STINGRAY'. A few exotic creatures with tentacles appeared throughout the series and electricity and Stingrays 'STING MISSILES' would do a similar job to the Seaview, but there was only a two man crew CAPTAIN TROY TEMPEST and PHONES as well as the sexy mute MARINA. THUNDERBIRDS also had a fondness for tentacled themed stories for ,mainly THUNDERBIRD 4, the submarine in the THUNDERBIRD fleet of rockets and craft. I seem to even remember SUPERCAR getting clutched by giant tentacles.

In  more modern days all these wonderful monsters have been neglected. Dinosaurs are going through a boom period at the moment, but theres nothing with giant tentacles coming from beneath the waves , unless its on your plate . .

WHO SAYS DALEKS AREN'T 'FUNKY'...THE SKA-LEKS FROM SKA-RO CAN EXTERMINATE AND SKANK!

A wee while before the extreme excesses of the festive season kicked in proper i accompanied my missus 'The Lovely Lynne' to a very strange boozer in Oldham in manchester to see her and the rest of the hooligans and nutters that comprise the MANCHESTER SKA FOUNDATION play a 'gig'...The pub was called a very un-pub like name...AREA 51. Which as any UFO /X-FILES buff will know is where the yanks keep all the crashed alien space ships and flying saucers as well as their alien crew members who graciously help our transatlantic cuzn's to develop weapons based on alien technology. Whereas the real AREA 51 is in the middle of the desert, our AREA 51 was down a cobbled side street round the corner from some kebab and fried chicken shops which i wouldn't have been too suprised to discover had their origins in some dead alien crew members, i'm not too well up on how many alien ships make the journey across billions of light years to land in that region, but looking at a few of the people ....Quite a few!

THE MANCHESTER SKA FOUNDATION are a really good Ska cover band ,(MADNESS, THE SPECIALS,etc) and have a really good following who do follow them around quite big distances . I've gotten to know quite a few of them ,all lovely people, but totally nuts!...I looked to the side and there was a full size DOCTOR WHO'S T.A.R.D.I.S. I thought, "My the bands reputation is spreading!" I mean the good Doctor has Gasped n' Wheezed his way through time and space to get to a little back street gig.

Even more incredulous, alongside was a real genuine DALEK...It's true music can bring people together ,even eccentric time lords and gooey slimey globules with a sore throat and lousy singing voice that live inside giant pepper pots.

But the love of music didn't end there ,as alongside was a real CYBERMAN standing placidly by his worstest enemies in the whole galaxy

It didn't end there as alongside them minding his own buisness was 'ROBBY THE ROBOT' from 'LOST IN SPACE'.....He'd found his way through space ,but was lost in Oldham, don't ask me which is better or worse.  Oldham and the AREA 51 started to pale as it proved absolutly impossible to get served at the bar. Our interstellar Ska-Fans mustn't be drinkers as they placidly stood and listened to the 'gig', meanwhile there was almost mass 'Exterminations!' at the bar as people were trying and failing miserably to get served.

Although the T.A.R.D.I.S. was there, there was no sign of the DOCTOR. I think he was inside sulking....He'd travelled through billions of years , billions of light years and couldn't even get a bloody pint of GUINNESS at the end !

THE INVADERS...(A QUINN MARTIN PRODUCTION!)....DAVID VINCENT HAS SEEN THEM !....AND I HAVE A FEW TIMES NOW !

NOW IS THAT OR IS THAT NOT A BEGINNING OF A TELLY PROGRAMME?.....Lousy special effects ; over the top dramatic voice over ,but ,still it is absolutly brilliant!..."A short cut he never found!..."...."..A lone deserted diner!..."...."..A man too long without sleep to carry on his journey!.." ...Great stuff. You knew it was time for 'THE INVADERS' one of the classic series from the 60's.

Nowadays they don't even bother with opening titles ,credits ,themes ,just straight in and over the next half hour or so of a 1 hour show the credits appear along the bottom of the screen ,very distracting and annoying. Gone are the days of the classic openings and theme tunes.

THE INVADERS was quite simply about an architect named DAVID VINCENT.  He was played by a good looking in a sharp featured lean way by an actor called  ROY THINNES. He was to achieve British fame as the first GERRY ANDERSON character without strings in his first real life actor filmed effort called 'JOURNEY TO THE FAR SIDE OF THE SUN'. In the INVADERS he stops for a rest as he is lost and stumbles across a landing site of ..."A ship from another galaxy!"....Thus started his one man war against the aliens.

The aliens had transformed themselves into human form and , to be honest as you watched the series every character from the highest politician to the lowest street cleaner was an alien that had been infiltrated into society. They had to be regenerated every so often in specially designed portable units .They would be put into glass tubes and the clever aliens were regenerated. They had no heartbeat, or pulse. Their little finger wouldn't bend.....I remember seeing some well brought up people at a restaurant as a kid and pointing out the aliens drinking with their little finger sticking out...I told me dad ,hoping to save the world and got an elbow in my ribs for my heroic action!.....Also they didn't bleed if cut and if they were killed they would burn up in a red glow leaving a tiny bit of ash to show where they'd been.

David Vincent , inbetween freelance jobs would troll through newspapers to find strange and weird occurences  that could be those nasty invaders plotting and scheming to destroy us ....And of he'd go in his 1960's caddillac's with the highly sprung suspension which were in all those 60's shows would either give you travel sickness or sea sickness. David Vincent , as played by Roy Thinnes had an edgy quality to him and the stunning success of the series is totally down to him. He was no nice hero ,but seemed to me bad tempered, but if  everybody thinks your nuts and your constantly running around in mortal danger trying desperatly to find, but unable to unearth solid proof proof , frustration would set in and build up .  His life is constantly being threatened and he can trust absolutly no one andif there was nobody would believe him anyway.....It would piss you off, i s'pose!

I bought the series on E-BAY a while back, then THE HORROR CHANNEL on SKY started showing them again ,so i started watching them again. Now they've finished The Horror Channel is showin a lot of the old DOCTOR WHO's ....Horror seem to want to scrape the telly vaults for these old classic series and thats fine by me. 

PETER CAPALDI....DOCTOR WHO , No 12.....HE'S BEEN GONE AND IS ALMOST HERE !

They say that time travel is impossible ,to an extent i suppose it is.....You can't go back to change the past as it has happened and if you could you would fuck up the universe by the cause of TEMPORAL PARADOXES ....Going back and killing your grandad ,so you would never be born ,so you couldnt grow to go back and kill him ,so you would then be born as normal ...Only to grow ....And go through it all again ,he'd die ; You wouldn't be born and on we go, ad infinitum ,so feasibly time would grind to a halt .....Thats according to our famous beloved past bugger-upper ,DOCTOR WHO!....The futures a different kettle of TARDIS grease as we are powering into the future all the time, whereas we can't affect the past ,everything we do affects the future. We travel through the present on our way to the future at the speed of time. The speed of time is relative to a variety of things.

Your mind is like a TARDIS and whereas your surroundings are the room ,office,car your in ,whatever ,your mind is infinite and makes you feel like your travelling through time. When your happy and active time zooms by, holidays flash past for example....When your bored or pissed off ,time drags by . You look foreward to something a long way in the future and suddenly your sitting there and its long passed and happened. 

When you were a kid things like school holidays seemed to last for months , nowadays that same period would be about the same length of time you could hold your breath for! As you get older time does accelerate , like a formula 1 car ,in the distance ,moving slowly over great distances ,in the distance, then, as it comes near it blasts past and dissapears into the distance again like events and years.

Only fairly recently the 'newest' DOCTOR WHO'..MATT SMITH announced his retirement from the role. The excitment built ....Who was the replacement ; The 50th anniversary was to be a DOCTOR WHO orgy of Whovian celebrations ......Suddenly thats history ,already been repeated on television.

Next is CHRISTMAS and forget the Oueens Speech ,etc ,DOCTOR WHO'S regeneration will take place the new boy will be unveiled. The drink, food ,presents ,decorations and most new year resolutions have already been long forgotten, its all over for another year.....We were waiting for the glimpse of the ,it has to be said 'very promising' looking new Doctor ...PETER CAPALDI....An interesting looking character who looks half the age of WILLIAM HARTNELL the first Doctor, even though he's the same age.

It'll be good to have a crazed ,bad tempered old fellah as the Doctor ,rather than the beloved schoolgirl sex symbols of lately, they have to cater for the miserable old farts amongst us!.....Before you know it the year will be drawing to a close ,we'll see the new series and SKY will be showing the repeats five times a day and capaldi will be over before you know it and here we go again, but in the period of time the calendar will be running a lot faster as the DOCTOR WHO'S and JAMES BONDS change seemingly on a weekly basis.

They shouldn't call it old age ....Fast or accelerated age would be more accurate.

DOCTOR WHO 50TH ANNIVERSARY ON HIS 900TH ODD BIRTHDAY...dO TIME LORDS AGE IN DOGGIE YEARS 18 FOR EVERY 1 OF OURS?

Whenever anyone says 'where were you when Kennedy was shot/'....Some of us know exactly ,as we couldn't give a shit about American politics and shag happy American presidents from mob friendly ex-bootlegging anti-British families, and we were only snotty kids , were watching 'Doctor Who!' Kennedy's assassination did admittedly have far reaching effects the main one being that the DOCTOR WHO pilot was reshown the following week after being lost in the 'Hu-Harr' of President Kennedy's exploding head.

It is the 50 th anniversary of the shooting ,but it is also the 50th anniversary of DOCTOR WHO and  the world has gone into a supernova size frenzy over, the fact that this time travelling time lord is celebrating his 50th anniversary on his 900th odd year ....Time lords must have age a little like Earth dogs ,but they age 18 years to our 1 year.

We live in times were everything is shown by advances in technology leaving no place for a certain brain function that once we all had and cultivated ...IMAGINATION!!!! Imagination was a wonderful thing ,where whole worlds and universes could exist in the mind of anybody and pictures from radio series  ,books and comics came to life ,but with the advent of things like CGI imagination has taken a serious battering. In the long far off days of the birth of DOCTOR WHO when all was filmed in a BBC warehouse full of draughts and fire sprinklers going off mid-scene and where everything was mad from cardboard ,old loo roll holders and ream upon ream of duct tape ....All of time and space was made .....Now that is imagination...The viewers watching through tiny screens at snowy black and white images were held spellbound .....Imagination running free!

The story of an old scientist in a time machine, well thats ok!...A little H.G. WELLS'ian ,but good stuff, then he's in a police telephone box from the 1950's ,which ,when you step inside is vast in size compared to outside ,not only the control room, but corridors and other rooms, DIMENSIONAL DISPACEMENT iseem to remember it being explained as ,there thats reasonable enough!....Why a police telephone box , for gods sake? Apparently ,so the 'ship' wouldn't stand out on alien landscapes it was equipped with the ,now famous 'CHAMELEON CIRCUIT',which changed it 's shape, but 'got stuck' and 'got stuck' as a police box...Aliens all over the universe now know what an English 1950's public police box looks like from the planet Earth.....And it even had a name the T.A.R.D.I.S.(Time And Relative Dimensions In Space)....Sounds 'Whizzo-super,but it was knackered and although they could whizz through time and space they had no control of where they were going, all added to the fun and gave you companions who had reason to grumble with the idiot of a Doctor who couldn't take them home. Nowadays the bright blue lovely clean TARDIS can turn on a stopwatch and go anywhere ,to the second and all the companions are bright young things loving the wacky ,zany doctor and looking for adventure.

The inside was wonderful too. In the beginning the walls were a mass of cicular globes ,apparently photographed pop out tablet holders by the special effects people ,but with a hexagonal control panel plonked in the middle it gave this sparten, but mysterious, etherial look to it ,totally alien. It was like that ,basically until TOM BAKER the 4th Doctor ,at one point ,gave it a captains bridge on a victorian sailing ship ,dark wooden panelling and all. The last couple of 'new boys' have gone all 'retro' and smoke,sparks,and lots of pumping and turning wheels drives the 'old girl'...I doubt they could flush the T.A.R.D.I.S. toilet without sparks and smoke.

The other huge grounbreaking part was the sound and music of the opening titles . Composer RON GRAINER  of the BEEB's famous ( once ) RADIOPHONIC WORKSHOP by looping sound tapes and film got audio and visual distortions that became the original opening titles for years ,possibly more frightening then the show. The T.A.R.D.I.S. engines were created from these techniques the hissing and ashmatic wheezing sound of take off when the central column started 'pumping' was made from the sound of scraping a key on the chord strings of a piano lying on its side in the corner.....Those sound effects , opening titles of breaking and joining blobs ,the music ,hissing, etc still blows me away!.....Anybody who says they prefer the new whizz bang CGI  effects of today just don't know what they are talking about!

Originally ,no 'Robots ,B.E.M.s( Bug-Eyed Monsters) were allowed....All historical adventures to educate the kids and develop a love of science and history. The first story was a dodgy one about cavemen and their quest for fire, but after that.....Well, after that a gentleman by the name of TERRY NATION gave in a script called THE MUTANTS and introduced to the world a 'bug-eyed robot which went by the name of THE DALEKS!!!!!!.....And nothing would ever be the same again!....The BEEB had audiences through the roof , merchandising and even two films remaking two of their stories, as the DALEKS had to be brought back, ad infinitum...Scriptwriters have gone nuts with the DALEKS and all they scream ,which in itself is odd for emotionless creatures is ....c'mon, all together now .."EXTERMINATE!" Again and again and again....In the first story i dont think they even said it ,possibly once. The first story shaped the rest .....They arrive in a strange place and mystery and drama as they explore ,then meet the baddies ,get taken prisioner than drama becomes adventure as they have to escape and foil the baddies plots which ussually involves lots of running around. then back to the T.A.R.D.I.S. in time for a tube of dinner from the food dispenser.

The first Doctor was hard man actor WILLIAM HARTNELL his Doctor was a grumpy old man with his beloved grandaughter SUSAN. He was alien, bad tempered ,crafty ,but mellowed over time with his accidental companions IAN and BARBERA. Hartnell became ill and his co stars had left and changed so he couldn't go on. Neccesity being the mother of invention, it was then that REGENERATION of the Doctor was thought of. WILLIAM HARTNELL'S Doctor ,was dying so regenerated himself into another version of himself with all his memories, but totally different character and features, this new 'cosmic hobo' was played in an equally mysterious manner ,but with a more gentle brighter side ,even humerous by the excellent character actor PATRICK TROUGHTON. His Doctor lasted with great success for 3 more years.

The BEEB in its wisdom and non stop attempts to save money wiped the tapes of many of Hartnells and Troughtons episodes ,most arelost but turn up in sheds and carboot sales. A few months ago ,the DOCTOR WHO world erupted with the news 106 episodes had been found in ETHIOPIA, they might have little food and supplies ,but they wont be hungry for classic sci-fi, but it turned ot to be a heap of newspaper shit and about 12 surfaced ,a few new DVD's for the x-mas market will be released.

TROUGHTON was replaced by JON PERTWEE,master of VENUSIAN KARATE/AIKIDO, and ace REVERSER OF THE NEUTRON FLOW!....There was a rumour SIR NED OF WALES, sir HARRY SECOMBE  himself  might squeeze into the TARDIS..." What/ what?what? Thhhhrrrrrppppp!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"...A time travelling ball of blubber as SPIKE MILLIGAN might've put it

Tom Baker curly hair, bulging eyes and 50 foot sca

rf came next ,these were all in colour ,but special effects didn't improve and  you were torn between loving and hating its brilliance and crapness...Crossrads/Acorn antiques in space. Doctors came and went ,all different ,everybody has their favourites ,most go by the one they watched as a kid ,but no matter what the events going on the whole thing hangs on the character of the Doctor ,no pressure there for the actor then?

It occurred to me when JONATHAN ROSS and RUSSELL BRAND got into trouble sending improper phone calls to ANDREW SACHS daughter ,they coud be DOCTOR WHOSSY and his alien companion RUSS!....Causing cosmic mayhem sending dirty messages to the EMPEROR DALEK  about naughties with DAVRO'S daughter.......

BLOWING OFF LOUD WINDY FARTY NOISES,DRIBBLING SPIT..ALL THE JOYS OF THE BRASS BAND..(notice no blowjob jokes?)

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