Hector's House - Grumpy Old Hector and Catty Kiki and Zaza...

                             

6 September 1968: 'Before September is over these faces will be as well known to the under fives as James Bond, the Beatles and Sophia Loren are to the rest of the family...'

When I was a tot and an infant schooler, watching Hector's House during its original era, I assumed that Hector the dog and Zaza the cat were married. Somehow, they seemed to have that sort of relationship. But they weren't.

Zaza simply lived in Hector's house. 

I was quite shocked when I discovered the truth in the 1990s.

Mrs Kiki frog, from next door, was a Mrs but we never saw her husband.

Goodness knows what their backstory was.

Kiki was a very clever frog - she worked for the weather bureau in London.

I was watching in black and white (BBC1 didn't 'go' colour until 1969, and we couldn't afford a colour set for years), and Kiki's chic gingham outfit, with its retro pill box hat, looked very like the uniform worn by staff at a cafe near me. So, in my tiny little world of tot-dom, it seemed surprising that she didn't work there. It was only in more recent times that I discovered Kiki's outfit was pink. The staff at the local cafe wore blue.

Hector's House was, like the Magic Roundabout visuals, an import from France, but there was no Eric Thompson here to totally rewrite the characters and dialogue. I assume the English dialogue and characterisations for Hector's House were much closer to the French, but if you have further information I'd love to know!

Hector and his friends were not products of stop/start animation like the Roundabout, but glove puppets - which seemed very obvious at times as the arms of the puppeteers were often seen where there should have been legs. Still, there was much loving detail in both the puppets and the sets, and Kiki and Zaza, sashaying around the garden one night, singing about how superior they were to Hector, actually appeared to be holding real candles.

Health and Safety would have a blue fit these days, but never mind - we could now achieve the same affect with CGI.

Hector's house was thatched and set in a lovely garden.

As with the the residents of the Magic Garden, the folks around Hector's House didn't always get on. Kiki and Zaza seemed a little narcissistic, and out and out misandrists (or dogophobics) at times, and Hector could be a bumptious oaf and a hidebound grump of a hound.

Zaza and Hector enjoyed a good quarrel - they were, after all, cat and dog. Kiki could be distressed by this early on, but soon settled down into ganging up with Zaza against Hector as they extolled their own superior qualities - or 'blew their own trumpets' as we used to call it.

But it wasn't all aggro, and the series was quite a gentle and genteel affair, with Hector's chivalrous manners usually to the fore. When he wasn't being a 'grumpy old Hector', or a 'silly old Hector' or whatever!

Dear Mrs Kiki Frog used a ladder to peer over the wall into Hector's garden.

The first season of the show was broadcast on the BBC in September 1968. Other seasons soon followed, and the original run ended in January 1970. Then the series was repeated, on-and-off, in its pre-News time slot until 1975, when it was relegated to early morning broadcasts during the schools' long summer holidays, before returning to pre-News repeats later in the year and then being put to bed by Auntie Beeb. 

The coming of the video age in the 1980s saw the first Hector's House VHS release (in 1989) and I seem to remember the acid house/dance scene paying tribute to the show with a souped-up choon at some point.

In the 1990s, and beyond, daft people saw all sorts of meanings in the show which I'm convinced weren't really there. When retro-tripping 90s youngsters heard a character (I think it was Kiki) mention the word 'trip' the absurd shrieks of delight from modern day dead heads could be heard from here to Lands End.

The characters returned briefly to TV screens in a series of advertisements for a bank account at the turn of the 21st Century. The scenario was very much the same, but time had obviously moved on - and Kiki appeared to be the worse for drink in one of the ads.

Shocking!

Playland, 1969: a lovely cup of tea in the garden for Hector, Zaza and Kiki,

In the early 21st Century, Zaza wasn't Pope Gregory the Ninth or Simon Le Bon and it's doubtful that Kiki was Louis XIV, but she certainly WAS sozzled. How times change (sigh).

Watching a few of the original episodes recently, I experienced a great blast of nostalgia. The viewings were accompanied by memories of Gran's steak and kidney pud, my Mr Mix from Nesquik hand puppet, and my being terrified by Patrick Troughton's face in the time tunnel in the opening credits of Doctor Who,

And I felt very fond of the characters and their idyllic existence (apart from all the squabbles) in that lovely house and garden.

I'm a silly, sentimental old Hector fan...

But, of course, the Magic Roundabout was in a class of its own and nothing could compete.

Mary, Mungo And Midge

Mary, Mungo and Midge make some jelly. I love the attention to detail - the 1960s kitchen, complete with kettle, flex and plug, the 'Crabtree's' jelly, the rabbit jelly mould and formica-topped table.

In 1969 the BBC took us out tiny tots of the Magic Garden and the cosy rural idyll of Trumptonshire and into town.

A real town. Well, at least realistic.

Mary was a pre-school girl who lived in a block of flats. A very modern block of flats. Quite posh, and only eight flats high, but still modern reality.

Mary was a very advanced pre-schooler, who knew lots and lots of things, could write letters to her grandmother, and spent a lot of her time in her large, sunny playroom with her pet companions, Mungo the dog and Midge the mouse.

And here we got a blast of whimsy.

Mungo and Midge could talk. Well, at least they could talk to Mary and each other.

This, of course, added endless appeal for pre-schoolers, and provided the basis for a series of episodes in which the modern world was explored and explained. What happens when you post a letter? Midge found out. What happens when you go into hospital? Mary and Midge found out. What should you do if you get lost? Mungo found out. How are greetings cards printed? Midge found out.

A wooden Mungo - he lives on our bookcase.

Mungo was the wise, sometimes grumpy and slightly pompous, grandfatherly figure of the group. Midge was the impetuous, endlessly curious child. Mary, although a pre-schooler, was a sort of mother figure, sorting out disputes between 'the boys' and being a bit of a bossy boots on occasion.

Mungo and Midge had their own special way of using the lift at the block of flats - with Midge standing on Mungo's nose to press the buttons.

John Ryan, the man behind the show, was a creative genius. He'd already brought us Captain Pugwash, and his visualisation of the world of Mary, Mungo and Midge was beautiful - rich with detail. His daughter Isabel provided the lovely voice of Mary, with Richard Baker being the narrator and providing the characters of Mungo and Midge. Newsreaders were rather like royalty to some of us working class viewers in those days, we deemed them terribly wise and posh, and I would love to see footage of Mr Baker 'doing' Midge's voice on camera. This gentleman had great talent outside of the newsroom.

'A town is full of buildings...' The town in which Mary and her pets lived was very realistic - quite ground-breaking in tots' telly.

Mary, Mungo and Midge is a time capsule from 1969, complete with 'old' money! It was repeated for years afterwards and has, deservedly, gained something of a legendary status, but its adventures in 1969 are incredibly 1969. After all, we were being encouraged to believe that living in high rise blocks was good back in the 1960s!

Mary, Mungo and Midge certainly had a very jolly time, and there was no distressing graffiti in the lobby or on the stairways.

Midge was a highly talented mouse - he could play the flute. But his repeated renditions of 'Three Blind Mice' were not usually appreciated by his friends.

My little life was turning upside down in 1969, I won't go into details, but it was not good and the state of affairs only got worse as the 1970s moved in and progressed. But, although I was suddenly not a happy pre-schooler, sitting in front of Watch With Mother, I was aware of the characters and found them a comfort.

It's a delight to watch, and I heartily recommend it.

The Magic Roundabout - Brian's After A Council House...

The Magic Roundabout! Using the striking visuals of a French animated series created by Serge Danot, Eric Thompson created his own characters and made it a legend in its own tea time here in England.

And it worked beautifully. The French visuals were surreal and highly colourful, the characters looked adorable, and when you added Mr Thompson's highly droll and very English stories, you had an unlikely recipe for a mega success. Mr Thompson simply turned down the volume for each episode of the French Le Manége Enchanté and did his own thing.

'Good gracious!' said Florence.

'Fancy!' said Brian.

Dougal - every dog has his day. Or tea time in this case. Interesting fact: Did you know that English animator Ivor Wood worked with Serge Danot on the original series?

I love this show. And I have a special link. I made my debut on the same day as the Eric Thompson/BBC version of The Magic Roundabout - 18 October, 1965.

So proud! Every birthday, I raise a mug to Florence, Dougal and co.

Eric Thompson, the esteemed creator of the English version characters, once said that he didn't believe in talking down to children. Children, he said, were just people who hadn't lived very long.

'Radio Times', 1968.

Interviewed in 1998, Eric Thompson's wife, the actress Phyllida Law, said:

'He got £15.00 an episode. That charming 'it's not acting, you're just reading it' thing. He had no rights to anything but his scripts, not even to the names, although they were his. Still, the Magic Roundabout helped us move from a flat to a heavenly house just up the road.'

Phyllida Law revealed that Eric Thompson sought inspiration from his heroes and those around him for the characterisations and names, seeing himself as being like Brian - irritatingly cheerful - and his wife as being a bit of a model for Ermintrude the cow. Mr MacHenry, the gardener, was named after their local chemist, and Buxton the cat from the Dougal and the Blue Cat film named after a cousin of Ms Law. Dougal's sometimes-mentioned-but-never-seen Auntie Megsie was based on his mother-in-law.

As for Dougal, he was partly based on Tony Hancock, but Ms Law, who always called her husband 'Tom' or 'Thompson', commented: 'He never listened to the French script. Thompson would never take us to a French restaurant. It was partly a joke, and a very Dougallish, Hancock sort of joke. He always thought he was like Brian the snail because he was irritatingly cheerful, but without doubt Dougal was to a great extent him.'

There were quite a lot of colourful characters in the Magic Garden, most well-known regulars, a few obscure like Penelope the Spider. I think I saw her about once. And the two little birds, The Tweets. Eh? Did not compute. They simply didn't register.

In a minute, I'll lollop through the regulars in order of my preference, but I'll start with somebody who actually comes in at number six on my own list. Why? Well, he was the very first character to appear in the show back on that eventful Monday in 1965.

I remember talking to my mate Don back in the 1990s about the Roundabout characters. 'My favourite character was Mr Rusty,' said Don.

I was incredulous. Don't get me wrong, I liked Mr Rusty, but he wasn't that interesting and didn't even spend that much time on screen usually. He played the barrel organ and owned the Roundabout, so his role was essential, but still... I always thought there was a faintly melancholic air about him, and could not get worked up over him.

Then I thought about my own favourite character, Florence. She was hardly the most amusing and fascinating of the Roundabout crowd either. In fact, I remember her once being referred to as 'prissy'. Why on earth was she my favourite? Well, back in the early 1990s, at the time of my Roundabout-orientated conflab with my mate Don, I was a care worker, doing a lot of counselling, and so decided, in my late-twenty-something-infinite-wisdom, that my feelings for Florence must have a deep, psychological basis. Perhaps I favoured her because she represented stable femininity? My mother was not stable, nor could it really be said were any other of the females in my family circle when I was a child, so perhaps Florence had provided me with something I was lacking?

I pondered, I analysed, then said to Don, 'Maybe Mr Rusty represented something lacking in your own life? A stable masculine influence, perhaps?'

'No,' said Don, 'I just liked Mr Rusty.'

So that was that.

And Florence is my favourite.

So that's that.

Mr Rusty with his Roundabout and trusty barrel organ.

Mr Rusty with Dougal and Florence.

The next on my personal list of Roundabout faves is Ermintrude the cow. Lovely Ermy - an upper class, highly good natured, pink-with-red-dots-and-a-blue-hat cow.

Perhaps Ermintrude represented another stable feminine figure to me? A lovable, dotty auntie figure? Or perhaps it's just time to cut out the psychobabble?

'Hello, dear hearts!'

Next up would have to be Brian the snail. Always cheerful. Always ready to get up Dougal the dog's nose. Brian was the working class man to Dougal's overbearing management figure, and he was great fun.

'Allo!' said Brian, arriving.

Brian, up a tree.

Brian with his lovely shaggy friend.

Next comes Dougal himself. Grandiose and at times manic, Dougal was the pivotal character in the Roundabout saga. This lover of sugar lumps had a spiky relationship with Brian, but the two were genuinely fond of each other really. Junior Points Of View revealed in 1967 that Dougal was the seventh son of a freelance lamp-post inspector, sent to Shepherd’s Bush to train as a sheepdog, was then an extra in The Hound of the Baskervilles, had bark-on parts in dog food commercials, and was discovered by Florence and launched as a dog star.

Dougal dreamt of glory. It was a dog's life in the Magic Garden.

And then there was Zebedee - a moustachioed, red-faced, pointy-pupiled thingy on a spring. What on earth WAS Zebedee? Well, actually, he was a jack who had come out of his box. He arrived in the very first episode of the Magic Roundabout in 1965 in a parcel, promising sad Mr Rusty that he would bring life back to the Roundabout, which had fallen out of favour with the local children. His role in the Garden was pure magic! His moustache was the source of all the abracadabra stuff and could make all sorts of things happen. He was the one who first brought Florence to the Garden, and he brought her along in many subsequent episodes, too. She was often seen to be waiting for him by the Roundabout. Zebedee also called time on most episode's events - 'Time for bed', that is.

Dougal didn't half fancy himself.

Still, he was rather adorable, and, being a major star, given to fits of quite understandable temperament. But he could be quite rugged at times. And sometimes a little coarse. He once told Brian to zip his screamer.

Episode One - and Zebedee arrives to help Mr Rusty.

Florence calls to Zebedee - who arrives. All together now: 'BOING!'

'Hello,' he said. 'Ready to go the Garden?'

Spaced-out (but only on sleep) Dylan.

Dylan was a guitar playing American hippie rabbit, who first snoozed onto the Magic Garden scene in about 1967. The Observer newspaper spoke to Eric Thompson on the subject and published an article on 23 April 1967: 

He [Eric Thompson] tries to amuse the adults with little jokes – provided they mean something to the children, too – but he is conscious of the danger of making the whole thing sophisticated. 

A rather hip rabbit joined the cast recently, and when Dougal remarked that he wasn’t like a rabbit at all, because he didn’t skip around all the time, the rabbit replied: “We’re rethinking the image.” 

Mr Thompson fancies he went a bit too far that time: “Children couldn’t really get hold of an idea like that.”

Dylan tries to recreate Dougal's 'epic' nose.

The Magic Roundabout quickly became cult viewing for adults. And it was not surprising. There was lots to appeal. One of my favourite scenarios involved Brian the snail feeling exploited by Dougal as they undertook some improbable venture or other. With Dougal in charge, of course.

'I'll report you to the Union!' squawked Brian.

'If you were in a union, I'd sack you!' said Dougal.

Some of the books based on the series make droll reading too - the ones written by Eric Thompson, that is. In one late 1960s publication Brian, feeling his living space was a little too confined, revealed that he was on the waiting list for a council house. This curious jostling of kiddie whimsy with adult reality still makes me laugh today. Genius.

Trouble brewed when Ermintrude decided to become a meter maid.

Mr MacHenry was the Magic Garden's gardener. He whizzed in on a little bike which went 'whee!' and seemed a bit of an odd-bod - most of the time a staid Englishman and, on at least one occasion, a manic, stereotypical Irishman, uttering such stereotypical gems as 'Yes indeed and begorrah!' Well, it livened him up as a character.

The train was a rare visitor to The Garden, but tended to liven things up when she did put in an appearance. Yes, that's right, she. The train was more than slightly hoity-toity, likely to go off in a huff at the slightest provocation. Go off in a HUFF - geddit?!!

And what about the larger children seen on the Roundabout on the opening and closing credits? Who were they? Well, they were Basil (the yellow topped boy), Paul (the blue topped boy) and Rosalie (self explanatory). They rarely appeared in episodes, but poor, dear Rosalie is etched on my mind after a tragic incident in the early 1970s.

I was a little lad, sitting on the loo and playing with a small blue plastic Rosalie I'd got out of a box of biscuits. She was fearlessly scaling a couple of small pipes which rose from the floor to the boiler beside the lavvy. Then, suddenly, DISASTER! Rosalie somehow slipped from my fingers and plummeted down, down, down, and disappeared through the hole in the floor where the pipes emerged.

I was devastated. I peered through the hole... yes, there she was, face-down and completely inert. Poor darling. I dashed to my mother who said: 'If you think I'm 'aving the floorboards up for a bit of plastic, you've got another think coming!'

I beseeched her. I even thought of be-screeching her. But boys were not allowed to cry in my household.

So that was that.

The Roundabout spun on and on, right up until early 1977, still as 1960s as could be. No Glam Rock. No Disco. No Johnny Rotten lookey-likey. After the show's end, it cropped up occasionally in repeats and, in 1989, the BBC released the first Magic Roundabout video.

As the late 1980s Acid House rave scene turned into the early 1990s rave scene, the Magic Roundabout was revived. The show seemed to fit well into the culture of that time, fuelled by drugs like ecstasy, and all sorts of things were read into it - just as they had been during its original run. Dougal and Dylan and co were, of course, as high as kites. The psychedelic landscape was indicative of that. Yes, the Magic Roundabout was simply the hippie 1960s played out by puppets. Every innocent word and expression of the series seemed to be linked to a groovy druggie lifestyle. Absolute nonsense, of course. Eric Thompson had simply poked a bit of gentle and innocent fun at the pop culture of the Roundabout era. Zebedee really was not 'on' something, and Dougal's sugar lumps were simply sugar lumps.

Back to Phyllida Law in 1998, who said: 'Thompson was rather surprised to hear that Dylan was a cokehead or whatever. He was just asleep a lot, this rabbit. He never smoked or anything. Tom just shrieked with laughter. Not that he shrieked because he was a straight man. It was me that did the shrieking.'

Back to the start of the 1990s, and new Roundabout merchandising began to turn up.

The first sign was a lovely series of T-shirts available at C&A stores. There was Dougal, and Zebedee and all sorts. Then the theme tune was transformed into various rave remixes and Nigel Planer brought the Roundabout back in a slot on early morning Channel 4 news.

My dear old Zebedee 'Time For Bed' T-shirt illustration from 1990. And the shirt seen on me on holiday last year. Yes, I do bear a certain resemblance to Dougal, don't I?

Florence disliked vulgarity.

Nigel - you did great at first - Florence pondering on the fact that everything was so intrinsically symbiotic was inspired. But then I fell off your Roundabout when Florence suggested a burping contest. Nigel, my darling Florence would NEVER have suggested such a thing. Not even in the 1990s. This was the girl who was constantly telling Dougal not to be vulgar, who admonished him with a stern 'REALLY, DOUGAL!' when he slurped his sugar lumps. This was an adorable young lady, steeped in Victoriana. Burping contest? No, no, NO, mate. After that your Roundabout revival simply became some of my favourite screen visuals with you doing a voice over.

Still, it's not all bad news - as Neil of the Young Ones you will always be one of my 1980s heroes.

More videos were released and the much-feared Dougal and the Blue Cat was amongst them. This terrified me when I was a little kid because of the Magic Garden folk being attacked and imprisoned by the dreadful Blue Force which took over the Magic Garden. My own little life had taken a turn for the worse in 1969 and I was going through bad times throughout the 1970s. The film didn't help, which seems daft, but I was six-years-old at the time. The Magic Garden was my little bolt hole and I hated it becoming insecure too. Still, never mind. The nightly episodes continued in their usual glorious 'everything in the Garden is lovely' vein and I soon recovered.

The Roundabout has since been revived in glorious CGI with Kylie Minogue as Florence. Not for me. Only one Roundabout for me. Eric Thompson's version. The characters are as much a part of my childhood as any traditional fairy tale characters. With added adult wit appeal.

Oh well. Time for bed.

November 1965: TV Comic - The Telegoons, Dr Who, Popeye And The Milky Bar Kid...

Front page star of this November 1965 issue of the popular TV Comic was Popeye. The spinach-scoffing sailor made his debut in his first ever comic strip in January 1929! There was nothing more exciting than the weekly comic... I had mine "put by" at the local newsagent's to ensure I didn't miss a single instalment of the continuing comic strips. TV Comic was published from 1951 to 1984.

The Telegoons were shortened and re-worked versions of the famous 1950s Goon Show radio scripts, featuring puppets. The show first appeared on the BBC in October 1963. Each episode was fifteen minutes long. In the comic strip pictured above, Neddie Seagoon is excited by a lower crested nit warbler.

The hugely popular children's sci-fi adventure Dr Who - still featuring the original Doctor, William Hartnell, in 1965, was a popular TV Comic comic strip.

The Milky Bar Kid ("The Milky Bars are on me!") first appeared on our telly screens in 1961 and was another popular TV Comic regular in 1965. I was surprised to find this comic strip - I thought advertising of this nature didn't happen until the 1980s!

I remember that Nestlé's was never known as Nestlé's by my family and friends here in England - always "Nestle's". It was circa the incredibly-swish-and-sophisticated late 1980s before the accent on the 'e' became known to me!

1969: Dr Who Exiled to Planet Earth

As every Dr Who fan knows, Patrick Troughton relinquished the title role in 1969.

In the story, the Tardis was grounded and the Doctor exiled to earth by the Time Lords. The Doctor also had a change of face and actor as Jon Pertwee took on the role for the 1970 series, portraying him as a cross between a retro dandy and a dashing James Bond figure, armed with brilliant gadgetry - such as the famous sonic screwdriver.

The Dr Who picture strip featured here, which apeared in TV Comic on 5/7/1969, adheres to the Doctor-exiled-to-earth storyline, but still features the image of Patrick Troughton as the Doctor, although in the series I believe that the Doctor was already in the guise of Jon Pertwee when he reached earth.

According to one very helpful source, TV Comic adhered to the series continuity: the Doctor was dragged into the Tardis to have his appearance changed by the Time Lords as Jon Pertwee took up the role at the start of the 1970 series on television.