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 . .

"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.

THUNDERBIRDS ARE GO'ER'S!!!!!!!!

My beloved Lovely lady Lynne filled a questionnaire on the facebook thingey on the computer for me the other day. One of the questions was about favourite telly programmes and she tapped out basically everything a certain Mr GERRY ANDERSON has put out over the years...Supercar, Fireball XL5, Stingray, Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, UFO. She asked me to deny my love for these fonts of nostalgia for all us middle aged oldish farts, and i couldn't. What my beloved doesn't understand is that all human life is there, with strings! In the beginning it was simple. Supercar was in a garage in the desert with Proffessor Beaker, Mike Mercury and Supercar, never any women to cloud and confuse the issues addressed in the drama of SUPERCAR.

But, this was to change when the puppet sculptors managed to work out how to do women. So, in FIREBALL XL5 ,Our dashing hero STEVE ZODIAC had a thing going with the lovely VENUS. It was all very innocent, except Venus seemed to spend a lot of time with a monkey like alien ZOONY! But, Steve spent an unhealthy amount of time with a robot who always wanted to be "Going home!"


Next came STINGRAY. Now things started to get a little spicey Gerry and Sylvia Anderson introduced a 'menage et trois' situation into the breath-taking underwater adventures. The hero of the(half) hour was the James Garner look-a-like, TROY TEMPEST, beloved by the lovely ATLANTA. She was voiced by LOIS MAXWELL the lady who became beloved of JAMES BOND, as MONEYPENNY. The problem arose when Troy and his co-pilot in the supersub, STINGRAY, PHONES, Where out fighting Aquanaut baddies who spoke like they were gargling mouthwash. They met an underwater beautiful woman called MARINA.Marina couldn't speak, god, i love her already! Poor ol' Phones never got a look in all the women seemed to have only eyes for that two-timing bastard Troy Tempest.



Then things got really complicated with THUNDERBIRDS. There was a much bigger cast in this one hour extravaganza and as a result things happened which caused eyebrows to raise even without the aid of strings. The whole of INTERNATIONAL RESCUE lived on an island in the middle of the ocean unknown to the rest of the world who depended so strongly on the hi-tech equipment built by a strange character with speech and visual impediments, called BRAINS. He had no sex life as he wa in his lab building thing and mixing chemicals. GEOFF TRACEY, was the daddy of the family and somehow with his bespectacled stuttering friend built a house on top of a series of rocket pads and silo's. I think health n' safety would have had something to say about it all, so i suppose thats one good reason for keeping it all very quiet. Geoff was very friendly with an English Lady, the lovely LADY PENELOPE.She ,with her machine gunning, rocket fireing,flying, sailing bright pink Rolls Royce, driven by her faithful sidekick PARKER, were International Rescue's British agents. Now, the fine ladyP', i could never figure out if she was up to something with Geoff, or The eldest son SCOTT. ALAN(Thunderbird3-spaceship),the youngest fancied his chances. But he was having a fling wih a girl who lived on the island ,TIN TIN.Now, was she being seen too by Alan or being 'gangbanged' by the the Tracey brothers with all this time on their hands between missions?

One of the brothers JOHN, was in a satellite listening to the radio all the time picking up people in trouble. He must've been a sad lonely fellah, what did he do to pass the time? The poor fellah didn't seem to have a chair to sit on, even. The rest back down on Earth, on the paradise that is Tracey island, sat around drinkink, painting and swimming. Normally it was THUNDERBIRDS 1+2 that went on the jobs. Scott(T1) would land and tell VIRGIL(T2) what to do. It was poor ol' Virge who got his hands dirty and his arse scorched while Scott(T1) sat drinking coffee telling him what to do, and once he's doing it, hurry it up.

T1 blasted off out of the swimming pool which could put you off your breaststroke. T3 blasted off through a gap in the cicular living room, their window cleaning bills for scraping the equivalent of 3 SATURN 5 rockets blasting off every weeks carbon deposits off the living room window must've been suitably astronomical. And just be careful if you want to climb some palm tree's when T2 is readying to launch.,

QUANTUM OF SOLACE!. I'LL SWOP MY BUCKET OF SOLACE FOR YOUR QUANTUM, ANYTIME, MR BOND!

JAMES BOND'S cold grey eyes gazed unblinkingly straight ahead, even as the room echoed to the sound of explosions; Rockets firing and the so familiar sound of machine gun fire."Thunderbirds". Bond hissed impatiently through tightly clenched teeth and pressed the cold plastic button on the Sky T.v remote control. He'd seen this one, where Thunderbird 3 has to rescue a ship which is flying straight at the sun. He turned through the channels from the Sci-Fi channel to the ridiculosly named 'Dave' channel where the new Aston Martin DB9 was being reviewed by Jeremy Clarkson on 'Top Gear'. Bond was a little irritated that this 'so-called' expert who never made any mention of the cars inbuilt armoury of twin Vickers machine guns:Rocket launchers or ,even ejector seat.

Bond took a bite of his toasted Wharburtons bread; Buttered with 'I can't believe it's not butter', using the clean side of the knife. Sipped at his Yorkshire tea made with 30 second boiled warrington tap water and 2 heaped spoons of sugar. He opened his sealed orders from 'L'. He had to hoover the living room and clean the kitchen; Walk the dogs and pick 'the little 'un 'up from school. Bond swore. It had been almost a fortnight since his last adventure when he had to travel the world; Bed beautiful women and commit various acts of mass destruction, murder and genocide, all washed down with a fine wine and dinner. It was his own fault, he had to admit if he was honest with himself. Bond had began to wonder if he'd had enough of the constant danger and always having to be' on the edge'. He had said, at one point that he needed ,just a, Quantum of Solace". A tiny piece of peace and quiet. Then those filmpeople that lived their life making films about him pounced on the phrase and were due to make another killing with yet another film about his killings.

Tim Leatherbarrow, cartoonist and would be agent, spy and goverment 'blunt tool'. said that if he wanted a Quantum of solace, he's got buckets of solace. He had so much peace n' quiet he didn't know what to do with it. So, if Bond wanted some of that he could help himself. So Tim is off somewhere causing untold destruction murder n' mayhem.The dinner suits a little loose on his small but perfectly formed frame; He's got to watch it with the ladies as 'L', The lovely Lynne'd kill him; And, he's got to take it a little easier on the 'pop, due to medical reasons. So, it's down to destruction and food, for agent00.7, (Decimal fraction of 007!). Bond sighed and plugged in the triple suction, ball roller Dyson hoover to make a start on the living room carpet, "Damn", he snarled to himself. As the Dyson started pulling at the carpet fibres,and a page of the Warrington Guardian wrapped around the hoovers front roller.