When i was that pimply snotty nosed ,scabby knee'ed kid you know from my many fond recollections from my past we used to have the old black n white telly. With our 8feet wide flat screens of today the mere 12inches or whatever from them days seem tiny, and with the big switches that your dad had to try and click to change channels or later the press buttons which you almost had to take a run at to press them enough to change to one of the mere three channels that we had. For years we never had BBC2, although we could hear it through the on screen snow. GRANADA had on a Monday at 8 o'clock WORLD IN ACTION and the BBC1 had PANORAMA.....BBC2 had THE HIGH CHAPERRAL, or ,ALIAS SMITH AND JONES. The happiest Monday night of my life ,i wont say happiest day of my life as that would be fairly pathetic, was when after 5 minutes fiddling at the back of the box of valves that was the telly by some fellah me dad knew we suddenly got BBC2 and i could watch the 'cowies' for the first time on the monday night ,no more current affairs for me, buster.
Just recently on our masssive flatscreen telly with tiny touch sensitive knobs 5000 channmels and not a valve in sight telly theres been a lot of western television ,films and series recently .THE HIGH CHAPERRAL is one RAWHIDE with a certain young fresh faced CLINT EASTWOOD inbetween shortpants and a poncho. I'm loving it ,a few newer ones ,one called DEADWOOD with our very own IAN MACSHANE as the town baddie, yup ,LOVEJOY hisself!...They've even drug up BONANZA and GUNSMOKE ,which ,apparently was the longest running, but i actually dont remember it i dont think GRANADA showed them. I wonder if ALIAS SMITH AND JONES is next up ,but there was STEVE MCQUEEN in WANTED DEAD OR ALIVE. He was a bounty hunter who didnt have a pistol in his holster ,but a sawn off WINCHESTER RIFLE. There was a series with ROD TAYLOR called THE BEARCATS as they played good mercenaries who travelled around in a STUTZ BEARCAT car doing brave good things ; CASEY JONES, jeez! I'm sitting here humming the bloody theme. CHUCK CONNORS in BRANDED!.. i'm singing the dramatic theme "Branded!..scorned is the man that ran ..What do you do when your branded and you know your a man?" He was supposed to have deserted and they broke his sword to compound his dishonour ,but he was dead brave really and travelled around with his broken sword so everyone knew he was a coward ,he may have been really brave but he was really stupid. CHUCK CONNORS other series was THE RIFLEMAN. Ah and on it goes, every second series in them days was a 'cowie'...
I have to resist the urge to hop and skip around outside ,slapping one buttock with one hand while firing a pretend gun made from joining two fingers together and trying to make gunshot sounds like we used to do around the playground once upon a lifetime ago.
