“Ditto! Seems like your parents were 'rod of iron' types! My mum was totally the opposite. Really easy going and the Golden Shot was a must have! Having said that, we also watched Val and his many jumpers! If he had Andy Williams and Roger Whittaker on you'd swear that the jumpers were knitted by the same group-of-grans. What about The Avengers (with Emma Peel) or Man In A Suitcase? Wonderful! Flipping heck The Minstrels sold some records! You still see 'em at charity shops. Wonder if Hull's Clive Baldwin is still on the go? He did a tribute act in Vegas to Al Jolson, although Clive originates from round here (big mate of my then best friend's dad, circa 1971).”

“Think we have had this before but


http://tinyurl.com/2v89jfx”

“My favourite moment was also around the same time getting my Raleigh Chopper bike. My mum and favourite aunt bought it for me as a joint Chrimbo gift. I had it three years and and it was still pristine when I passed it on to a cousin in '74. I was mortified when I went to their house a year later and saw it in a rather deteriorated condition. Ha. Good to reminisce but (eek) enough about me!

Now here's one....coal fires. We sort of took them for granted. The house I first lived in didn't have a bathroom and we had an outside loo. Real posh when my mum managed to get an electric light in there! When we moved and the new place had a bathroom e thought we'd won the Pools.”

“I always remember we as kids wasnt allowed to watch steptoe & son my mam said it was rude sometimes, i also remember pipkins with hartley hare and topof the monkey on a dinner time ,any one remember this kids programme ?.”

“Hullbloke,
Steptoe was far too vulgar for our household too, even the Liverbirds ( they were common) and The Likely Lads were deemed unsuitable. I was allowed to watch Casey Jones even though it was American, I think I enjoyed the theme tune more than the content!”

“Quatermass and the Pit - I had nightmares about locusts afterwards”

“We would look forward to a saturday night ,,sweets and lemonade night or something from chippie on newbridge road that was in front of open fire , watching tv,,,, seems years and years ago now though Missfoodlove,, miss those care free days.!”

“I used to love watching 'Love Thy Neighbour, Some Mothers Do Ave Em and of course Till Death Us Do Part with Warren Mitchell as the one and only Alf Garnett. Bless This House and Man About The House/George & Mildred. Special times eh? i was allowed to watch everything. This is where my well balanced-ness comes from! Tee hee! Missfoody - your mum & dad were a bit flippin' strict. Did you rebel in later life?”

“Bond films, raiders of the lost ark, close encounters & Jaws used seemed really special on a saturday night ... i also used to like beadles about and blind date :)”

“MissFoodLove:

I think your parents sound a bit on the strict side too, but if they were restricting your intake of AmeriCultureBarf, at least they had some common sense about them! I'm fairly sure you'll agree with me, now you've had some years to look back and gain perspective.

I've never had access to Steptoe and Son, only the American knockoff Sanford and Son with Redd Foxx, so I don't know what they found offensive about it. Sounds like Sanford may have been cleaned up a bit in comparison. But that was Redd Foxx, aging comedian, making a living. If you've ever heard any of his early 'party albums'... mum and dad would **NOT** have approved!!!”

“Sensational, my rebellion started early and finished late.
bt13, Your viewing indicates your age, I am seriously jealous but make the most of it!:)
Mr Septic, I don't think my parents really had my best interests at heart, it was all keeping up appearances and catholic nonsense!
When our children were younger we gave them TV vouchers every Sunday evening, for every programme they watched they paid us a voucher, news and David Attenborough were free, Australian programmes were very expensive (Mr Foodlove worked for an Australian company and was not too fond of Aussies!) When the vouchers ran out which was usually on Thursday the TV stopped, it made them far more selective and also encouraged them to discover radio.”

“With every respect MissFL, that strictness and selectiveness that was shown to you obviously rubbed off I think, hence the vouchers! Did they have to put their hand up before they spoke or did they have a little more freedom in that department (gulp).

Black Beauty was always worth a watch and how about (God forbid) Skippy (using all my vouchers). Don't take me the wrong way. I'm a fan!

We've touched on this before.... Robinson Crusoe. The music especially was fantastic but I didn't mind that it was dubbed with English, despite it being originaly 'foreign'.”

“DR who used to come on and i would hide behind the sofa as the begining freaked me out.”

“I think that the vouchers did as intended, made her kids think about the consequences of their actions. Note that they did have choice--just had to be aware of what their choices meant. Splendid idea--much better than simply 'No because I say so' or, worse, just raising another bunch of fick planks who don't know nuffink 'cos their parents don't do nuffink. My own upbringing tended more toward the latter, and it wasn't good for me.

What was the Mr.'s radge with Aussies, Miss?”

“I was 6 before we got our first telly but what you`ve never had, you don`t miss. I remember my friend having a telly before us and we all used to sit in her house to watch Mighty Mouse at 5 o clock.
Once we got one though it soon became part of everyday life. I loved the cartoons of the day, Pixie and Dixie, Huckleberry Hound, Yogi and Boo Boo. The was also one called Four Feather Falls but I can`t remember if it was a cartoon or puppets.
At 6 o clock every week night there was an american family comedy, Mr Ed, the talking horse, Petticoat Junction, I love Lucy, I can`t remember any more.
Friday at five to five it was Crackerjack with Lesley Crowther and Peter Glaze, I loved that.

Apart from kids telly across tea time I don`t think we watched much. Too busy playing out probably although I do remember sitting in my pyjamas to watch Emergency Ward 10 or Wagon Train.Then there was ofcourse Dr Kidare. My mum had a massive crush on Richard Chamberlain.
Sundays were both good and bad.
Good because, after a bath we watched Sunday Night at the London Palladium.
Bad because after the bath we had our heads scraped raw with the nit comb.

After that I can`t remember much until I was I was in my early teens and allowed to stay up a bit later. I vividly recall watching the Wednesday Play and being motified at having to watch the risque scenes while mum and dad were in the room. So embarrassing.”

“Mr Septic,
The Aussies had a business model that worked well in Australia but didnt translate we'll in the U.K, the result being they damaged what had been a successful organisation. We had to entertain some of the Aussies who came over on secondments , they looked down on us Brits and were astonishingly arrogant and very ill mannered.
I have met many lovely Australians so please don't all start on me, this lot were on big salaries and up themselves!
Mr DJ,
Our children had loads of freedom, a lovely fat pony,bicycles and a treehouse with periscope to spot any potential invaders! We wanted them to have a sense of adventure and they did, we found our son abseiling off an old barn roof with some dubious looking rope wearing a balaclava, he had been doing it for days without us realising, not ideal I know but they had great fun! Television was a last resort, we were lucky as we lived in a safe and remote part of the country, I wanted them to make the most of it and they did!”

“MFL,

Sounds to me as if your kids had a perfect childhood. Good for you.”

“Flossy,
Sadly not perfect, is there such a thing? My parents were really grim but my husbands parents were fantastic, so he had good role models and I just worked hard never to be like my parents!
They are all adults now and very independent and happy, they all joke about my TV obsession but all three are avid readers, the youngest is in India without any Internet or TV and has been for 5 months now so he is reading anything he can get his hands on and discovering Indian history, not bad for the boy who only read Tin Tin for pleasure until he was 13.”

“Missfoodlove - can we picture you as Barbara Goode? You sound lovely but you have just the right amount of bite to keep silly people in check.”

“I wish I had her sex appeal, she is still very beautiful, what a brilliant comedy that was. It is so easy to be funny using vulgarity or mocking people. There is little well written comedy on our screens now.”

“Anyone remember armchair thriller? I used to love that. Dahl's tales of the unexpected, with the dancing silhouette and the carousel; The Avengers, the old one with Patrick McNee aka John Steed with Emma Peel etc. Going ever further back in time, what about 1950s radio? Educating Archie, Ray's a Laugh, Take it from here, featuring the Glums with Jimmy Edwards as Pa Glum, Dick Bentley I think was the totally dopey son and June Whitfield as the hilarious lovelorn Eth. My favourite TV from that era was Emergency Ward 10 and popeye! Not forgetting the pop program of the time, six-five special. Oh, the memories :)”

“My morning coffee just shook my other brain cell awake.

I had many favorites, but one of them was the old Robin Hood series, starring Richard Greene and Alan Wheatley. A couple of years ago, before they got bought out, Hulu was showing some of them online for free, so I watched.

Great storytelling, done with children in mind but without talking down to them as is the norm these days, especially with all those preachy cartoons. As per the standards of the time, the hero (Greene) was clean shaven and the villian (Sheriff of Nottingham--Wheatley) sported the standard evil b*****d pointed goatee.

I remember that, even as a lad of seven, I looked forward to the encounters between the Sheriff and Friar Tuck (Alexander Guage), who always took full advantage of his clerical immunity to take as much mickey out of the Sheriff as he could get away with, while the Sheriff stood fuming. Sorry Hulu stopped the free showings, or I'd post a link or two. Very fine TV indeed.

I was sorry to learn that Guage, who had become typecast by his ever expanding girth, couldn't get work after the series ended, and overdosed on barbiturates a few months later. He had been a very popular stage and film actor in prior years.

The Avengers was in my teen years, not really childhood. I certainly learnt to like black leather, tho'!!! Woo hoo! :))”

“THE SCARF - This was a serialised drama from the early sixties and I loved the haunting theme music. It was not until many, many years later that I found out it was called "The Girl From Corsica" by Ron Goodwin. It can be found on You Tube. In fact, here it is: http://tinyurl.com/dxkhxf6”

“All Our Yesterdays, Family At War and Stars On Sunday.”

“ad the Dick Emery Show.”