Reviews

Created by the Children's Film Foundation (remember the pigeons taking off in Trafalgar Square on the intro credits?), Sammy's Super T-Shirt was just one of the cheesy kids flicks aired by the Beeb on Friday afternoons in the Seventies and Eighties.

This film was all the more memorable to me as it was shot around my local area. The cinder athletics track where the grand finale takes place was where I too competed in district championships while at school (although I would have benefited from Sammy's Tiger power and the ability to speed up the film to make me run faster!).

And the creepy house where Sammy gets kidnapped was known as Murphy's Mansion. Run down and dilapidated after its appearance in the film, it was home to many figments of kids' lively imaginations - killer tramps living in tunnels, murdered children haunting rooms, zombies lurking in the woods. Naturally it was the mecca for any adventurous child, and could only be accessed by swinging precariously over a river from a boarded-up bridge or by climbing over fences and running through back gardens.

It's long been knocked down and replaced by bog-standard new houses - not quite the same really. And the same goes for the pigeons at Trafalgar Square - where are they now?

'Look and Read' was an educational programme shown in the 'Schools' time on BBC2. If you were one of the kids lucky enough to catch it, it meant that you were missing Maths or some other dull lesson just to watch TV. Which, when you're seven or so, is just about the best school can get! Wordy was the host of the show, a floating torso (early blue screen - no expense spared) painted orange and decorated with egg cartons (well, maybe some expense spared!), and he'd link educational snippets and cartoon sing-a-longs (good old Derek Griffiths!) with the featured episode of the drama serial. It's almost possible to tell a kid's school year from the particular serial they watched - whether it be about racing pigeons, peregrine falcons, fairgrounds or such like. At the end of the film, you'd get to read the highlights of the story on screen, and then Magic Pencil would show you how to write your letters. For anyone wondering, 'top to bottom, up and over' is how you'd write an h!

I would bet big money that any child who grew up watching Jigsaw will have one distinct memory of the show. Not Wilf Lunn with his handlebar 'tache and funny straw boater. Not Janet Ellis in her first role before moving up to 'Blue Peter'. But 'Noseybonk' - a nightmarish creation of Adrian Hedley's, who donned a scary white plastic mask with a huge proboscis, and went snooping around poking it where it wasn't wanted, jumping out of bushes and generally scaring impressionable young children. Think Michael Myers from Halloween for the under fives! My brother, now a sane-ish, level-headed adult, still shivers at the mention of this segment of the show, and its freakish character with black suit, bulging eyes and Einstein-like hair. Amazing what the BBC thought would be a good way to educate kids in the Seventies!

Before the days of nude quiz shows, Keith Chegwin was the golden boy of kids TV. This fun music quiz with obligatory gunge was a spin off from Cheggers' success on Swap Shop (Tiswas's Saturday morning rival). There would also be a 'live' performance from a guest band. Red and Yellow teams of school kids would battle it out to win pretty cool (for their day) prizes such as all the top ten singles on seven inch vinyl, answering questions on the latest teenybop fads like Kajagoogoo, doing challenges, scrambling over giant bouncy castles and such like. And at the end of the show, Cheggers would have a good bounce with the kids himself! Robbie Williams immortalised the show on 'Shooting Stars' by doing impressions of the buzzers.

'The Machine Gunners' told the tale of a group of wartime teenagers and their adventures with, yes you've guessed it, a machine gun! As a young lad, I enjoyed the making camps, firing guns, fighting, soldiers and warplanes elements that the title suggested. However, the programme had far greater depths, and tackled such diverse topics as bullying, bereavement, disability, camaraderie and teenage angst, set against a backdrop of WWII Newcastle. Think 'Byker Grove' meets 'Hope and Glory.' Thanks IMDb for showing that the director was involved in spooky but quality BBC kids drams such as 'Children of Green Knowe,' 'Moondial,' 'Dark Season' and 'Century Falls' (the latter two both written by the guy who regenerated Doctor Who).