The Age of Innocence ...

I don't know whether it's because I took one step closer to the big 3-o this week, or whether the conversation I had with my cousin last weekend about our favourite shows when we were kids left me in a nostalgic mood (probably a bit of both) but all week I have found myself trawling YouTube for clips of shows I'd long forgotten. Some were frankly embarrassing and made me cringe to think I'd once been able to enjoy them so much; others hit me like a sledgehammer in the heart, I could practically taste my lost childhood and ached for it.

It also struck me how much kids TV has changed in recent years. Things were so much less complicated and I suppose unsophisticated when I was a little kid in the 80's, but at least the shows had charm and magic. Maybe it's because I'm getting older and losing my own ability to be charmed, but I watch the kid's programmes today and I almost feel sorry for them. It seems like they're expected and are being encouraged to grow up fast ... too fast, in my opinion. The programmes seem to be either insultingly inane or there is a hard edged reality to everything, even the cartoons, and whilst I still enjoy cartoons I am enjoying them through an adult's eyes, which makes me wonder where the charm content is for children.

Maybe I'm old fashioned, and I know that in today's harsh world we should prepare children for what's coming ... but c'mon! Let's allow them to have a bit of wonder and magic before they have to deal with broken relationships, financial worries, responsibilities like having a good career and the right house and the right car, blah, blah. Sadly, there is going to be more than enough time for worrying about that stuff later. Let them BE children, with a shitload of fairies and wizards and speaking animals and rainbows and ... smurfs! Yeah! Give them smurfs, dammit!

Speaking of rainbows ... one of the staple kid's shows in the UK for anyone growing up between the early 70's and 90's was a programme called "Rainbow".



It was essentially about a grown man named Geoffrey; Geoffrey was a simple soul who loved brightly coloured trousers and garish sweaters that looked like they'd been knitted by his Gran, he shunned the real world to live in the most spartan house ever with Bungle (big, sinister looking bear with a whiny voice that made you want to insert building blocks into his parts most private), George (gentle, sweet, pink and very camp Hippo ... with eyelashes courtesy of Max Factor and lingerie by Victoria's Secrets under that desk, I suspect) and Zippy (irritating, loud, opinionated gobshite who left millions of bewildered kids wondering every week just what the fuck he was, but who was also without doubt the star of the show).

There was also a house band called "Rod, Jane & Roger", a winsome and hairy folk-trio ... although this had morphed into the catchier titled "Rod, Jane & Freddy" by time I started watching it in the 80's (Jane having left poor cuckolded Rod for the dashing Freddy after a torrid affair ... oh yes! It was better than Dallas, let me tell you).

The show ran twice a week, and each episode consisted of a running storyline, at the end of which lay the obligatory moral lesson, a short animated sketch, a story and a rousing sing-a-long ("Three Fat Sausages Sitting On A Wall" being a classic example).

Ok, so it was a bit naff ... well totally shite actually, but kids (myself included) were drawn to it. Because it had a bizarre charm all of its own.

Sadly it got scrapped in the early 90's, kids had become more demanding, more discerning some would say. It also became a victim to the growing trend for political correctness and like so many programmes was more and more heavily edited for fear of offending someone, somewhere. "Gay" didn't mean happy & carefree anymore.

It's now considered a cult of course and has been used in a variety of sketch shows, pieces of modern art and even rave music. It's also gained some notoriety over the years for being tongue-in-cheek and using homo-erotic double entendre's (much like the other children's classic "Captain Pugwash" with its "Master Bates" and "Seaman Staines" characters), however this is mostly unfounded, stemming from an episode that was filmed as a bit of fun for the production crew one Christmas and was never actually aired. But of course it eventually got leaked and added to the legend.

Here it is in all it's glory, enjoy! ...