Lucky Seat Number

A few weeks ago, Mrs B was looking at Penny Dreadful Vintage. Retro Pigeon had made 70s style animal cushions from vintage fabrics. One of these was a lion cushion that looked like Parsley, from The Herbs. Mrs B started to search for the"I'm Bayleaf, I'm the gardener" song and I got The Herbs video (that we just 'happen' to own), to compare the likeness.

The search took us to YouTube and we watched the opening sequences of Stingray, 2 versions of The Banana Splits, Bagpuss, Noggin the Nog, Robinson Crusoe, Captain Pugwash, Mrs B's favourites - White Horses and Follyfoot, followed by a complete episode of Ivor the Engine. (Welsh accent) ..."What have you come for Jones?" "What have you got?" "I've only got coal." "Coal it is then!"

(Mrs B and a banana split! A 3rd version!)

It struck me just how much quality entertainment was available to our generation. Whilst sitting in the sun at lunch 2 weeks ago, I mentioned this to PowerPoint's dad (his now 15 year old boy gave his class a PowerPoint demonstration of a holiday trip to Paris a few years ago, and Mrs B and myself have referred to him as such, ever since). When Micheal was growing up they were re-running Captain Scarlet and Stingray, but now there are the children's TV channels, said his dad.

"How, with Fred Dineage" he said, smiling, and we both did the raised hand native American Indian greeting that was the introduction to the programme. Our younger colleagues just drank their coffee, much bemused! We talked about Jack Hargreaves, an older member of the "How" team, who ended up having his own programme, "Out of Town", which was filmed in a shed at the Southern TV Studio, Southampton.

During our time in Southsea, Mrs B went for an interview at what had become the Meridian TV Studio. Whilst crossing one of the aerial walkways, who should be coming towards her but Fred Dineage! To this day, she regrets not giving the raised hand greeting, with a deep-toned "How".

One other intro we watched on our 'YouTube venture into favourite TV', was The Double Deckers. I am sure that I saw an episode on the big screen at Saturday Morning Pictures. I only went once, to the Odeon, North End. I remember an old B&W episode of a weekly feature, with charging centurions. It was either the age of the celluloid or hand-tinting for visual effect, but the whole film had a blue tinge to it! There was also an adventure by The Children's Film Foundation. In the midst of the gaggle, of this raucous environment, came the announcement of the 'Lucky Seat Number' for which there was a prize of a big bag of sweets!

With Mrs B's re-tuning of our Freeview box, we can now pick up Meridian transmissions. Imagine our delight, when 2 weeks ago, we changed channels just in time to get Fred Dineage MBE reading the news!

How!