From Andy Pandy to Zebedee: The Golden Age of Children's Television

Long, long ago, in the days before digital,

when television closed down at night and didn't even run all day,

there was an idea.

Hello, children.

The idea was that children should have,

deserved to have, their own television programmes just for them.

For the next few minutes, I'd like you to see

some of the children's programmes.

Some thought this was a silly idea

and that children were not worth talking to, or listening to.

How dare you!

But others took the idea and protected it

and learned the secrets of making TV for children.

Magic, magic.

They unlocked the magic and believed in its power...

We'll be back on Thursday.

..and little by little, they built whole afternoons full of wonder...

..just for children to enjoy...

..and the cleverest sort of grown ups.

How did they do it?

Hello.

Let's see.

MUSIC

Right from its founding in 1922, and for its first 40 years,

the BBC made provision for children.

This is the BBC Home Service. Hello, children.

When I was a child, it was radio.

Children's Hour on the Home Service of the BBC.

Every night at five o'clock, and I was a great fan.

Larry the Lamb...

'Oh, Mr Grouser, Sir, we were just going to look for you.'

'Well, look at me. Well, you had the opportunity.'

..and Dick Barton.

Really good adventure stories, which you had to imagine, of course.

Swim for it, Jock, swim.

You know, the mind's eye stuff.

As television took off, Children's Hour made the switch.

SIREN SOUNDS

Seven long years of war meant no television at all.

# We want Muffin Muffin the Mule... #

But, when it resumed in 1946, children's programming was back

for one hour a week, on Sundays,

and Muffin the Mule made his debut.

Now, what are you doing behind there, Muffin? I see.

A sly cup of my tea, as usual.

Children's television of that period was a bit staid

and it was adults addressing the audience

and addressing the audience as opposed to

addressing the individual child.

# I am now a traffic cop

# They have to halt when I say stop... #

Cecil McGivern, controller of programmes,

said children are fascinated by television

and we're doing bits of scraps

and bits here and there,

but it's not been properly coordinated and organised.

In 1950, a Children's Department was set up

to expand the range of shows on offer.

I think everybody in the department

had different ideas about how we should do it.

Everybody was dedicated to doing programmes for children.

I'd like to give you an idea of the sort of things you can

see in our programmes.

Was it Bill or was it Ben

did whatever bad thing it was just then?

Andy Pandy.

There isn't such a thing as Andy Pandy.

-It's...

-POSH VOICE:

-Andy Pandy.

Are you waving to him, children?

It's Crackerjack!

The only crime I have committed

is that of a wish to serve Your Lordship faithfully and well.

I am going to tell you a story.

MUSIC PLAYS

And, of course, Tales Of The Riverbank.

Hammy, come back, you're too young.

Standby. Prepare for takeoff.

How on earth did they film that?

It must have been heartbreakingly difficult

to get a hamster to steer a boat.

You can't get a hamster to do anything.

Nothing much happened, but I loved it. I loved it.

MUSIC PLAYS

Children's programmes had got along quite happily...

..until ITV was invented.

While the BBC sought to educate their child audiences...

..ITV went all out to entertain.

Adventure series...

He's always helping people.

..and Westerns....

Westerns, they're exciting.

Boots and saddles where you see the soldiers and that,

and the Indians, and plenty of action.

..gave children a much wider choice

of exciting and well-made programmes.

I can remember American culture coming into my life.

I must have been about five or something like that and we had a TV.

We were quite young.

I was used to Andy Pandy and Muffin the Mule

and then one day...

..I saw an American cartoon.

I thought, "Wow, this is amazing."

Now don't give me any trouble, chicken.

Chicken?

You can get better laughs out of them what you can other things.

ITV's output wasn't fettered

by notions of public service broadcasting

and lured away 75% of the audience.

Well, there is just one more thing to be done.

What's that?

Dig another grave.

In response, the BBC did away with anything deemed cosy.

MUSIC: Theme from Z-Cars

-Come back!

-No!

In came dynamic dramas...

-Have you got a favourite programme?

-Yes, Z-Cars.

-Z-Cars? Yes.

..and out went the budget for the kids' TV.

Listen, we'd have found you whatever you told us and...

With funds being funnelled into winning back the adult audience,

children's entertainment and drama

were handed to the adult departments to manage.

-Cue and cut.

-1:54, 1:55.

Cue and cut.

Any remaining shows were absorbed by Family Programming.

In 1964, the Children's Department was disbanded.

We felt betrayed by the BBC.

I don't know why they did it but we were at the receiving end

and we thought, "We'll show them."

And that, actually, explains our attitude.

Apart from a wonderful dedication to children,

we wanted to give the management a black eye.

Standby, studio, let's have it quiet now, please. There's a lot of noise.

Despite the cuts, producers were determined to deliver fresh,

contemporary and quality programming for under fives.

We wanted to push a few boundaries and to loosen it all up

and do something that was much more appropriate to the time.

The idea was to create a nursery school of the air

with presenters much closer in age to the kid's own parents.

Here's a house, here's a door.

Windows...

One, two, three, four, ready to knock.

Turn the lock.

It's Play School.

-Hello.

-I'm Virginia.

Hello, I'm Gordon.

Now we're inside, let's look around.

In developing the series,

the creators consulted development experts...

Seven pegs along the wall.

..and rang the changes with the new trends in 1960s child psychology.

For any young animal, including human beings,

play is their first school.

It's the means by which they learn.

They're creating their personality and that enlarges their sympathy

and their understanding.

It's just an essential part of childhood, I think, make-believe.

And so that's how the title was chosen.

We, sort of, looked at the ingredients that you needed to have.

The songs, the games, the get out into the wider world

and the storytelling.

And it was just putting all that together

into a new and different kind of format.

Look who's here.

It was very innovative, Play School, I think.

There was definitely an air of pioneering.

Of course, the show's success relied on those ideas

being translated to the audience

through the interpretative skill of the presenters.

Not those ones.

You close your eyes up tight like this.

Among those pioneers was film star Paul Danquah

and actor couple Phyllida Law and Eric Thompson.

Oh, what a nice hat. Do you see anything different about me?

Yes. I've just stuck it on.

My husband was in children's television doing children's things,

so I got on.

# He stays in his box.

'Nepotism.

# As long...

'We did five programmes in about two and a half days.

'It was very tight.'

If you're working very hard under those circumstances,

you always get hysterical, don't you?

# And suddenly...

# Up he jumps! #

1968 was a watershed year for the show.

January, February...

It was repeated in the afternoons.

Play School became the keystone to Kid's TV.

Oh, yeah, my son loves it. We have to race home from school.

I watch it. There's nothing else on TV.

Hello.

We're making holes in this paper.

Now it's a sheet full of holes.

We're going to use that later.

Yes, in fact, the whole programme is full of holes and dots this week.

There are even dots on the calendar.

VOICE OF DIRECTOR

-That's wrong.

-Can we put take two on the clock please, Frank?

Big Ted and Humpty want to play a game.

I didn't mind doing all the songs. I knew every nursery rhyme.

What I couldn't tolerate was holding Hamble, Big Ted and Little Ted.

I couldn't do it.

I won! Humpty and I have won.

Never mind, Big Ted.

And Cynthia, the producer, said,

"When you do something you like, you're great, we love it.

"When you do something you don't like, it's rubbish.

"So you've got to get rid of that

"and you've got to sell yourself to the programme.

"If you do that, we'll keep you on.

"If you don't want to do that, just tell us and we'll say goodbye."

And I went out and I thought,

"Why are you being bad at something?"

So I turned it round.

# Humpty Dumpty had a great fall... #

DRUM ROLL

# All the King's horses and all the King's men

# Couldn't put Humpty together again. #

It doesn't hurt, you know. He likes falling off.

And within the next few,

I realised the integrity of the people who made Play School

was so wonderful and so fabulous and so true, that it was...

It became more and more and more of a pleasure to do.

So, I stayed for 16 years.

I picked up speed and tried catching up,

but you were peddling faster too.

# Riding along like a hurricane, honey, spinning out of view

# You looked so pretty

# As you were riding along... #

I always thought if you wanted to educate a child,

you could do it through music and comedy.

Sing the song.

The comedy and the music gets the attention,

the focus, and then you introduce the education.

# All I want to do is wiggle my ears for you

# All I want to do is wiggle my ears for you... #

When I first went in, it was terrible, terrible rhythmless music

and I remember them giving me a song called...

-POSH VOICE:

-Dig, Dig, Dig, There's A Man With A Spade

And He's Digging A Hole In The Road.

And it was sung like that.

And I said, "Look, can I change this a bit?"

And they said, "Well, if you must, if you must."

I said to Jonathan, "Give me a 12-bar in blues in B flat."

And we ended up with...

# Dig, dig, dig, there's a man with a spade

# And he's digging a hole in the road... #

And they said, "Well, you can't do that."

I said, "It's that or nothing." So, we did it.

All the letters came in saying,

"Can Derek Griffiths do more of those pop songs

"because my kids were dancing around in the room."

There's a robot!

Play School was the leading light

that showered the schedules in sparkling spin-offs.

# It really doesn't matter if it's raining or it's fine

# Just as long as you've got time

# P-L-A-Y

# Play Away-way, Play Away... #,

Play Away was made to showcase the freewheeling talents of Brian Cant.

Now, watch.

Watch.

Watch!

He was best at it.

He was just like a little boy himself.

Play Away was hugely popular.

Can you make this piece of rope into three without cutting it?

Because it was aimed at a slightly older audience, you had jokes.

You had slapstick.

You had Jeremy Irons...

It was refreshing.

We're a pair.

We're a pair.

What are we a pair of?

We're a pair...

..of nickers.

And Bod was a Play School graduate too.

Originally a picture book that was read on the show,

it was only natural that a Play School star

should help bring it to life.

The challenge, really, for me, was the signature tune.

So, I found a jazz violinist who was a student of Grappelli

and I got him down to Olympic Studios in Barnes

and I got my penny whistle and I went do-do-do-do-do-do-do.

And he started playing.

MUSIC PLAYS

And it was take one.

"Hello," says Bod.

"Hello," says Frank.

"Hello," says PC Copper.

You had John Le Mesurier's wonderful narration,

which was just so classy and that was a privilege.

It became... It became a classic.

I've been having a lovely rest and now I'm ready to tell you a story.

Play School's success meant that there was leverage

to push for further funding

and more time in the afternoon schedule

and the inspiration came

from Play School's own storytelling strand.

Jackanory, Jackanory, Jackanory, Jackanory....

There was a little rhyme

at the beginning of it, I remember, all those years ago.

I'll tell you a story about Jackanory

and now my story's begun.

I'll tell you another about Jack and his brother...

And now my story's done.

Jackanory.

Originally, it was a Whig political rhyme.

It's all about going out and shooting a Tory

and then shooting another one.

So, we thought that might cause a bit of flutter

if anybody cottoned onto that, but nobody ever did.

There was once a very rich gentleman

and he lived in a castle with a lot of fine lands.

Well, to start with, the actors were a bit dubious about doing it.

You know, "Five 15 minutes'... Why should we?" and all that.

But, gradually, they began to realise, and so did their agents,

that five 15 minutes solo exposure was no bad thing for any actor.

Jean and Peter went out one day with their dog, Scamp.

They ran into a meadow and Scamp broke free of his lead.

It's a good show-off thing, Jackanory was.

"What on earth is that?" he asked. "What?" said John.

"That!" said Peter.

And so many of my mates used to say, "How do I get on that?"

Because the audience was huge.

I mean, the whole of English childhood used to look at it.

I won't be a minute, Vi.

So, parents have much, much less time than in the past,

to read to their children.

The great thing about television is it's a classless thing.

You are reaching out to all children

regardless of where their home is

and it's one of the great values of it, of course,

is that children who may not have anyone to read them a story

don't miss out.

I used to imagine one single child

and I'll come straight through the lens and talk to you.

Did you hear about that? Did you? Come on, I'll tell you.

And then you've got them.

And if you get that one in your mind, then you've got

all the others as well.

He didn't like to run until he was on the other side of the door

and then he bounded down the stairs

and out through the main entrance to his taxi.

I don't know why he's not just on television

on a Bernard Cribbins channel, actually, telling stories.

Just there, on in the background. It would be great, wouldn't it?

Is that Bernard Cribbins? Yes, he's telling a story, yes, all-day, yes.

No, you don't, Buster.

Bernard doing Arabel's Raven was a great favourite.

They heard the phone inside the house begin to ring.

HE MAKES PHONE SOUND

Kenneth Williams, the voices were extraordinary.

They've been expecting this kind of attack for years.

Not that he was easy.

You were to be put out of action by sleeping pills in your muffins.

And many, many people remember Judy doing A Dog So Small.

He opened his eyes and watched the light fade and then,

when it was so dark Ben could hardly see, he saw clearly.

She had, then, all the magic that she continues to have.

He saw that you couldn't have impossible things,

however much you wanted them.

And if you didn't have the possible things, you had nothing.

Jackanory's traditional storytelling feel

cloaked the programme makers' rebellious intentions.

MUSIC PLAYS

It provided an opportunity to introduce filmed sequences

to illustrate the stories - a sidestep around the restriction

on the Children's Department.

We were banned from doing drama, but we were allowed to do Jackanory.

So, with a bit of creative accountancy,

they saved up the days of filming which they didn't use on Jackanory.

And then they did a Jackanory all on film

which was, in fact, a play.

It was a drama with actors but it had narration,

so we hadn't broken any of the rules.

This was just a way of telling a story,

it just happened to have a few actors acting in it and so on.

So, out of a lot of clever chicanery,

children's drama was reborn.

The spin-off, Jackanory Playhouse,

brought stories old and new to life...

Tis! Tis a witch!

..and ran concurrently to the original,

which had lost none of its popularity.

Telling stories, I think,

is one of the most pleasurable things to watch, certainly to do.

But it's also very valuable, I think.

Not long ago, there lived in London a young married couple

of Dalmatian dogs. Pongo and Mrs Pongo.

One of the most important things is you can't mess about with kids,

because you're telling stories to a child

who maybe never heard a story before

told with such intensity or joy or whatever it might be.

And I still get it from adults.

There's a black cab driver, East Ender,

he looks in the mirror and he says, "Do you know what?

"Jackanory, it made me want to learn to read."

Which killed me. It's wonderful.

There are things that the physical book can do

that the television can't.

But equally, there are ways

of bringing that same energy and enthusiasm

right through the glass to say to somebody, "This is the story.

"Do you want to know others? Go and find some others.

"Write your own."

We started off with Play School, then we had Jackanory,

then we had, usually, a cartoon.

# Top Cat... #

Top Cat was weird because it had a very finished title sequence.

Beautifully hand drawn backgrounds, so finished

and so gorgeous, actually. It looked lovely.

And then it went into what was the production design,

which was really stripped back,

and I could never work out what that was all about.

It struck me years and years later, "Yeah, of course,

"they've pitched the series on this really lovely look

"and they've used that sequence as the title sequence

"and they've realised they haven't got the money

"to fulfil that all the way through the series."

So they've stripped the backgrounds to almost what we call a UPA look,

very, very stylised.

How many times have I told you to keep your hands off my phone?

Oh, how thoughtless of me, Officer Dribble,

I mean, Dibble.

I didn't keep count. Should I have?

It had some hilarious wisecracking voices

and it was like a sugar-charged drink.

As the afternoon went on and older children were coming in,

the programmes got more demanding.

That was the theory, anyway.

Vision On, in the late '60s, looks really natty.

They had a great design.

Vision On had grown out of For Deaf Children...

Hello.

My name is Cyril Fry.

..a programme developed in the '50s that used captions,

but not signing.

But viewers complained about its slow pace.

It didn't look like other shows.

When Top Of The Pops began in 1964,

it was a surprise hit with deaf viewers because of its energy.

# I live in an apartment on the 99th floor of my block... #

With this in mind, producers Patrick Dowling

and Ursula Eason developed a concept.

A stream of ideas - Vision On.

# Hey, you get off of my cloud

# Hey, you get off of my cloud... #

It didn't rely on the spoken word.

And the visual excitement that was in there

sometimes was quite anarchic.

Sometimes beautiful.

It was, basically, for all children.

The format deliberately leapt around and took off on tangents,

to reflect a child's imagination.

All anchored in the studio by Pat Keysall, who signed.

Hello. Today's theme is circles.

And artist Tony Hart.

The only restriction, as far as we were concerned,

was that nothing should really last

more than a minute and a half, two minutes.

So, if you think, in a 30-minute programme,

we had to have more than 15 different items.

And all the different people we used,

who were cottage industry animators,

brought in lots and lots of new innovative ways

of making television.

And another animation came with a couple of guys

who were only students.

We did a very simple cell animation

of a character that we called Aardman,

because he was a, sort of, idiotic Superman.

Nobody knew he was called Aardman because, of course,

this was basically a silent programme, so only we knew.

And we used them over a number of series.

All of the stuff is happening

whilst we're, kind of, in the sixth form.

And we thought, there's got to be a better way

than doing this darn 2D stuff.

So, we started using clay.

And that's when, I think, we realised that this technique of clay and models

and stop frame, actually, is great fun.

We weren't good at it, but we had the luxury

and the great opportunity to learn whilst getting it shown on TV.

I used to particularly like the gallery.

I was always very judgmental, so when the gallery came up,

I'd sit there saying,

"Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish, quite good, Oh, yeah! Very good.

"Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish."

We'd have ten out of maybe 6,000, 7,000.

A lot of children were disappointed.

Thank you for sending us your lovely pictures

and I'm sorry that we can't return any,

but all those we show get a prize.

What happened to those ones that couldn't be returned?

Erm, I think they were recycled.

Vision On fulfilled the audience's interest in ideas.

When the series came to a natural end in 1976,

the team were determined to keep making shows to fuel that curiosity.

We were left well alone.

We were down in Bristol anyway and we really did what wanted.

Their next project for the 4:30 audience was built around Tony Hart.

You could say that this is a programme

about making pictures with what isn't there.

He was a great gentleman.

He'd been a captain with the Gurkhas and he was a natural,

natural person and natural performer.

This old bit of sponge...

Because he was so soft spoken, children would then think,

"Gosh, I'm actually sitting beside him."

Peel off carefully.

He could take any object, or any series of objects,

and put them together and make a picture.

What I liked about those programmes

is that you didn't need a big art cabinet.

You could make things out of things that you had in the kitchen

or in your desk at school.

Tony was at the centre of Take Hart

and they wanted a character to be a foil to him, a comedy foil.

So, could we come up with a character?

And that's when we came up with the little character Morph.

MUSIC PLAYS

Yep, here's Morph, there he is. There he is.

There he is.

He's just plasticine.

The simplest animation puppet.

What a mess!

And I think, for him, it was a great relief...

And stay there.

..that he could do something which wasn't always doing art.

You could have a little bit of fun

with this little imp on the desk top.

MUSIC PLAYS

So, I think he was really, really fond of him.

They became inseparable, in the public's eye.

Tony Hart was the sweetest man I have ever, ever met.

-NEWS REPORTER:

-A plasticine army of Morphs

gathered outside Tate Modern yesterday

in memory of one of Britain's favourite television presenters.

Tony Hart died earlier this year, aged 83.

There was a spontaneous flash mob of Morphs on the Southbank.

It was really quite extraordinary.

An outpouring of love, really, for Tony.

The Vision On visionaries weren't just into art.

Producer Clive Doig was also the originator

of word puzzle programme Jigsaw.

I was asked to go to an audition for Jigsaw

when I had just had my first baby,

the celebrated chanteuse and Strictly finalist Sophie Ellis-Bextor.

Anyway, at that stage, she was weeks old

and so I went to see Clive Doig

and he, sort of, persuaded me to do it, really.

That was the word.

Clive was puzzle crazy, so there were always clues within clues

and things that you could follow over the whole series

and things that you could follow that worked backwards.

Did you get it?

But if you didn't want to play, you could still have fun

and that was Clive's idea, too.

You can still watch a thoroughly enjoyable programme.

Janet, you should call him Pterry. After all, he is a Pteranodon.

But the P ought to be silent.

Those peas certainly aren't silent.

She was amazing at being able to relate to these weird

characters, including Adrian, who was quite mad.

MUSIC PLAYS

Adrian Hedley was the other presenter.

He did a character called Nosybonk

and, actually, that is the character that most people come up to me

and say terrified them throughout their childhood.

I can sort of see why.

As long as we keep the therapists busy, that's the main thing.

MUSIC PLAYS

The lateral thinking extended to science and numbers.

The amazing thing about numbers is that we're surrounded by them,

yet we're still fascinated by them.

Go on, then, open the pyramid.

I hate times tables, multiplication, division.

That's why kids get fed up with this awful curriculum

that we call maths and is really numeracy and nothing more.

You can't have a hydrogen bomb in a TV studio.

There's a limit to what they let you do.

Eventually, we were finding that we had enormous figures.

Tremendous.

But 60% of our figures were adults.

Many of them were old-age pensioners.

So Thora Hird never missed a programme.

And if the practical exploration of academic ideas wasn't enough...

# We are the Champions.. #

..there was old school sporting endeavour.

When we went to a school,

you would obviously have the sports teachers there

and they would put forward all the front row

of the rugby team or the girls who played hockey best,

and that's not what we were looking for.

We were looking for characters

and kids who'd worked well together.

Through the tunnel. Who keeps their hat on?

What a great, great idea.

And these were kids' programmes that absolutely touched the nerve.

They caught on.

I'm ready. Come and get it.

And the Children's Department grew and grew and grew.

It's Keith Chegwin here. Just thought I'd tell you to

tune in watch Cheggers Plays Pop this Monday at 4:40 on BBC One.

Eureka!

The viewers' enthusiastic response

vindicated the department's determination.

They staked a claim for even more of the schedule space.

Monica Sims said,

"We do every kind of discipline,

"everything with the exception of news."

And I thought, "I wonder if there's a way

"of doing news for children."

I went to see the head of news and he said,

"Well, I can give you the studio

"and you can have the use of my correspondents

"when they've got nothing else to do."

The means to make the show was secured. Now it needed a presenter.

If you were in charge of children's programmes,

what kind of changes would you make, if any?

Mostly children instead of adults.

You'd want more children involved in programmes?

The adults are taking over the world.

Search was the BBC's current affairs show for kids

and its host was John Craven.

-Do you prefer Paul sitting in the seat to me?

-Yes.

Oh.

I got a call to say that a news programme

was being contemplated for children

and we had six weeks to see if we could get it right

and none of us had worked at television news before.

All the research, statistics and focus groups

stated that it was doomed to failure.

Bernadette Devlin has tonight begun her six-month jail sentence.

Children hated the news. It was the man in a suit talking.

It was boring.

So it was a very dangerous enterprise, really.

And if you lost the audience there, you were finished.

-John, can you look at camera, please?

-Anything for you, Patrick.

First on BBC One, John Craven's Newsround.

On Tuesday 4th April 1972, John Craven's Newsround went to air.

There's been a lot of reaction to the report

from the Government's Health Education Council

which said that pets could make you ill.

The lead story was something which affected children.

In those days, corporal punishment was in the schools

and I said on the day that they abolished caning,

no matter what else happens, that's the lead.

We've got 6.30, not 6.15.

It was started on a shoestring. Everybody did things for free.

We got the very distinguished foreign correspondents of BBC News

to do items especially for Newsround

because most of them had children'

who didn't really know what their dads did for a living.

This was the dad's chance to show their kids what they did.

This is Michael Burke for John Craven's Newsround

in Yorktown, Virginia.

This is John Humphrys for Newsround in Salisbury, Rhodesia.

This is Martin Bell reporting for John Craven's Newsround.

Now and again, the foreign editor would say,

"I don't know how you've managed to work this, John.

"Because I have John Humphreys in Beijing

"refusing to close down the satellite

"until he's done his piece for Newsround."

These children live at the Sacred Heart orphanage in Danang.

Once a principal American army base, of the 300 here,

50 are orphans whose parents have died in the war.

One way we had of explaining world events was through

the eyes of children abroad who were experiencing this.

One of the very first examples of that was during the Vietnam War

and I asked Martin Bell, who was reporting from Vietnam,

if he had time, could he do a little bit for Newsround

about what it was like to be a child in a village in Vietnam

right in the middle of the conflict.

American servicemen bring presents and help.

But happiness for these and other orphans in Vietnam

can't really begin until they find themselves in families

where they are wanted and loved.

And he sent us this very moving film

about these young children in this village

and it was the lead story on Newsround.

And it was also exactly the same film

which was shown on the Nine O'Clock News.

And Martin couldn't really believe it.

It just shows at times,

Newsround and the main news could be on exactly the same level.

Details are still coming in about the shock news that

Pope John Paul II has been shot.

100,000 people may have died from starvation and disease in Ethiopia.

Choosing the right words is so crucial.

Over the last 40 years,

there have been some really horrible things

happening just before five o'clock at night

and quite often we were in loco parentis.

There's no adult in the room at all.

In fact, many times, adults have told me

that their children have broken the news to them

about something really important which they'd heard on Newsround.

It was a time when the Children's Department had a real significance.

Children's television became a microcosm of adult television.

You had lots of fun programmes, you had competitions and games.

You had serious drama like Grange Hill.

I ain't giving you more money.

And you had Newsround. Newsround was always there at five o'clock

in the middle of everything.

And that's all from Newsround for today.

See you at the same time tomorrow. Until then...

Goodbye. Goodbye for now. Bye-bye.

It was a very important part of many people's lives.

Back in the 1970s, channel chiefs were persuaded that factual

and even fun programming

justified increased spending for the weekday schedules.

But fantasy proved a harder sell.

The problem is that drama is enormously expensive.

-Take your leave, Sir.

-No, Monsieur Le Baron.

-This time it is you who are to take your leave.

-You must be mad!

Not any more!

It doesn't cost any less than what it does for adult drama,

but children's drama is vital.

That's why we were so upset when it was taken away.

For a time, drama was bought in from across Europe

and dubbed or narrated.

# On white horses let me ride away

# To my world of dreams so far away... #

We were all besotted with White Horses.

And if pushed...I won't, but I can still sing the theme tune.

# Two white horses... #

Yes, all of that. Love that.

Steady, lad. Hold him!

Oh, he's running away again.

And the singing, ringing, dinging, flinging tree, yes.

I had nightmares about it into my late 20s.

We'll put the tree in here.

What will happen to the fish?

The way that the Princess behaved, was so incredibly cruel.

Take them out! Hurry up!

The visuals on it were very different, very, very magical.

They were very creepy and that would either give you nightmares

or you'd be drawn in and fascinated,

even though you didn't really understand a word.

As a kid, that really, really upset me and the sound...

I can hear it now.

I'm going to have a damn nightmare tonight!

MUSIC PLAYS

But as the department proved themselves

and budgets were negotiated,

adaptations of classic English novels were made

for the afternoon audiences.

Do people call you Al or Bert?

I don't like my name being abbreviated.

And who designs sets when he should be doing his homework?

No quarrelling, please.

Now, look, we have the problem of the broken window.

It was great fun.

It was great fun except it was uncomfortable wearing these vests

that the girls had to wear under their costumes

to hold bosoms in place,

because we were all considerably older

than the ages we were playing.

Oh, look! It's hatching.

I think there was an overall tendency of BBC kids at that period

to be a bit middle-class.

And I think it was something that a lot of us

felt quite strongly about, because that wasn't the way things were

and the world was changing.

And although I am a huge supporter and fan of the classics,

I did want to do more contemporary stuff

that was more relevant to the lives of children as they were living it.

Hence, Grange Hill.

Marion Edwards?

It was controversial right from the beginning

and there was a lot of complaints.

Suddenly, the powers that be kind of sat up

and noticed what was happening

and Monica Sims defended it very, very strongly.

Don't let me ever let me catch you doing that again. Understand?

Aside from Grange Hill,

you had things like adaptations of Bernard Ashley's Break In The Sun.

The very, very strong story about child abuse,

which I'm not sure that you could do today.

-Well, have they sent you home to get it?

-Yes, they have.

It's got to be in today, otherwise I can't go.

Oh, yeah, does he know about your mum's headaches?

And about me being out of work and about you wetting the bed?

-Were you dry last night?

-Yes, I was.

That's two nights in a row, like you said.

We always tried to keep the balance

between the contemporary

and the historical and the fantastic.

And because there was enough money,

we could do both.

I may bring more than my show in my box of such delight.

Drama became an essential in the later part of the afternoon schedule.

BLUE PETER THEME TUNE

But the jewel in the crown was always Blue Peter.

Working late is one of the film editors.

She's putting the finishing touches to the opening film

for the next edition of Blue Peter.

Started by John Hunter Blair in 1958,

Blue Peter was a 15-minute show aimed at 5-11 year olds, bridging

the gap between Watch With Mother and a magazine show for adults.

Items on toys and animals were there from the start,

but it wasn't until 1962 that the show hit its stride,

revamped by new producer Biddy Baxter.

Biddy Baxter arrived

and she had the tremendous idea about what children wanted.

She seems to have a private line

through to all the eight-year-old minds.

-Three, two, one.

-Off we go.

Right from the very beginning,

we wanted to produce a programme that really involved viewers at home

so that they weren't sitting there like cabbages

and letting the programme swill over them,

but we left them with something to do afterwards.

Just about 2st.

You little terror.

It was exciting to join

and I thought it was terribly important to have a logo.

And so we commissioned a young up and coming unknown artist,

Tony Hart, to produce an emblem.

And we had this ship on everything connected with the programme.

The music changed and the opening sequence changed

and in came the badges.

Of course, that was another thing we had.

I think pretty much the same lines as John, go for this suit.

It's called a jumpsuit.

It's been designed specially for men by a designer called Gloria.

"Where's your badge?" "Oh..." I wish I'd had one tattooed.

It was almost a sackable offence if we'd done a film

and we hadn't put our badge on. You had to be very careful.

That was one of Biddy's laws. You wear the badge.

That's the funny bit.

He gives the big bit to Sarah and I get the little bit.

It doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.

Just apply your minds. Stop panicking.

THEY SING

Biddy was a fulcrum and all of us

knew perfectly well that however much we bumped around in the ether

she was in the middle and that was good to know.

She believed in Blue Peter. That was the important thing.

And I think to a large extent we did as well.

I'm upside down!

But it was the feats of derring-do which proved the presenters'

commitment to bringing us great TV and kept the viewers hooked.

John did some incredibly brave things.

We never had any insurance for any of those things.

If John had fallen off Nelson's Column,

goodness knows what would have happened.

That's a bit dirty. Never mind.

I don't suppose anybody will see that.

The best job in television without any doubt.

Here we go.

I hated parachuting. I mean I really hated it.

But I also like the fact that I hated it and I could still do it.

I'm only a beginner so I'm going to race two other beginners.

All three of us were in different powerboats.

I couldn't go any faster.

What a fantastic battle this was turning out to be.

It was great. I was loving every second of it

until I heard a terrific crash.

And we hit a sleeper.

We turned round and there was no back of the boat

because the sleeper had flipped the engine up,

which actually missed my back, I was told, by about that much.

It could have sliced down the whole of my back.

What had started out as a sport had in a fraction of a second

turned into a near disaster.

I wasn't pulled out immediately.

It was, "Hang on, stay there. No, just stay in the water.

"We'll just get the camera ready and we're filming."

So I was there shaking from the shock of this having happened

and sort of doing a piece to camera in the water.

I'm very cold and rather wet and shaking a bit.

They were fun but I think of all the things

I'm probably the most proud of with Blue Peter

I would say it was those Christmas appeals.

Look at this. We've got right up to the 10,000 mark,

which is two thirds of the way towards the final target

of 15,000 parcels for our Blue Peter tractor for Africa.

I think it's absolutely fabulous

and let's hope that we can get it for Christmas.

There had been a sort of tradition

before I joined

that shortly before Christmas,

the Blue Peter studio was filled with every imaginable kind of toy.

And it was a rather uncomfortable feeling.

"What's in it for me? What am I going to be given at Christmas?"

And we thought it was a really good opportunity

to explain to the audience that there would be

some children somewhere who weren't going to have a nice Christmas,

who weren't going to have Christmas presents.

This is the Blue Peter hamper. Are you going to

-tell everybody what is going to happen with it?

-Yes, OK.

Chris and I discovered that quite a few children this Christmas

wouldn't be getting any toys. We were rather worried about that

and we thought we'd like to do something about it.

And then we had an idea

and we thought maybe you would all like to help by sending in a toy.

In the following years, the strategy changed.

The viewers were asked for things that they could easily lay their hands on.

Rubbish that could be converted to cash.

No sooner had we finished the last line of the address than

the envelopes started arriving, pretty much.

It was always really astonishing.

You didn't have to have money for this.

It wasn't about money. It was about doing.

It was about collecting.

It was about thinking. It was about coming up with ideas.

If it was collecting stamps, one child could send one stamp,

so they felt they contributed.

Another could send bookloads of stamps.

Whether it was helping at home or overseas,

Blue Peter viewers surpassed the targets year after year.

To tell a child that they can effect huge change where

you are perhaps getting glimpses

of some shattering pictures of children who are starving,

to feel that you can effect a change

and then you see films where other children are getting involved

and it becomes the effect of collective action...

For all the sort of apolitical aims of Blue Peter,

that in itself is a truly pure political act, isn't it?

That, as a collective, you are able to make a change for the better

and the value of that, it's priceless, isn't it?

Each afternoon of children's viewing

marched inevitably towards the evening news.

But in 1965, the schedulers

hit on a way of delaying the inevitable.

This is Mr Rusty.

He used to be a happy man, but now he's sad.

There's no magic in life any more.

Made in France by Serge Danot and Brit Ivor Wood,

the rights to Le Manege Enchante were bought by the BBC.

HE SPEAKS IN FRENCH

The beautiful French animation required re-writing

with an English language script.

BOING!

And the man tasked with the translation

was Play School favourite Eric Thompson.

A Grundig machine came to the house,

to his study, with two huge wheels on

and the film would just go through from one wheel to another.

And a tiny, tiny little screen in the middle.

"Who are you?" said Mr Rusty.

"I'm Zebedee. Zebedee."

"What do you do?" said Mr Rusty. "Magic."

The animation is simple, I would say, politely,

because they don't sort of...

-emote.

-They don't emote do they?

-No.

-No.

-They jump and they move.

They wave their heads and they wave their arms,

but they're not conveying any emotion at all,

which is why Eric could write different stories.

The French was absolutely...

SPEAKS IN HIGH PITCH

SPEAKS IN FRENCH

..horrible.

Zebedee asked Florence what she would like to do today.

Thompson redid it. Consequently, it's very, very quiet.

She would like to do something restful, like picking flowers.

His choice of words is heaven.

"What's your name?" said Dougal.

"Brian," said the snail. "Brian?" said Dougal.

"Snails aren't called Brian, snails are molluscs."

The resulting combination of wry writing

and Thompson's tones charmed children of all ages,

especially those returning from work

and switching on to catch the headlines.

"Come down, Dougal," said Florence.

Because it was in that transition space

between the end of children's television and the news,

almost regardless of what age you were, you would see it.

"All the birds are up," said Florence.

"That's their problem," said Dougal.

It was so well timed by the BBC because it was just before the news,

so Mum was getting the tea ready,

Dad was coming home, you know, and the kids were out of the way,

being occupied. Very clever.

It was sort of written for adults.

Or rather, let's say it wasn't written for children,

it was just written for an intelligent audience of any age,

I suppose.

Really? Why does everyone have to be so stupid?!

While the kids were quite happy to take the stories at face value...

I knew that would happen.

..the grown-ups looked for deeper meanings

and a myriad of myths sprang up around the show.

Treasure!

To some, it was a political satire on the French.

He called the dog Dougal because we lived in Scotland at the time

and he was, as far as I was concerned, a Scottish dog.

But the French were very upset,

because they thought it was de Gaulle

and we were being rude about their president.

What?

What? What? What? What? What?

To others, it was all a psychedelic trip.

I'm afraid she's been affected by all those poppies she's been eating.

I mean, Dylan was supposed to be full of drugs and things.

I'll, er...sleep on it.

My husband wouldn't know a drug if it stood up and shouted.

Where's my leading lady?

And to one or two,

it was all about Mrs Thompson in the shape of Ermintrude.

I'm a film star! Film star!

Because I'm theatrical.. and wear hats.

-What would my mother say?!

-It was rubbish.

I don't think any of them were based on anything.

When, in 1967, the BBC moved The Magic Roundabout to an earlier slot

in the children's schedule, there was a national outcry.

"Pay freeze, £50 travel allowance, high taxes

"and now you've altered the time of The Magic Roundabout.

"What else are we children over 30 going to be deprived of?"

It's time for bed.

It was clear that this five minutes

had become a focal point in the nation's viewing habits,

a much needed drop of feel-good before facing the news.

That was our target.

That was the Holy Grail to get that five minutes before the news.

I kind of like the bizarreness of The Clangers.

I liked trying to decipher their language.

WHISTLING

The Clangers spoke unto every nation in a musical language,

but we still understood every syllable.

The Clanger scripts were written out in full, in English,

and we played it, so...

CLANGER VOICE

Was the bloody thing stuck again?

They're very gentle and live their own lives

and I think they would be very alarmed if they got tangled

with our sort of life, the life of earthly civilisation.

The contract to run Britain's main satellite television network

has been awarded to a group backed

by some of the country's most successful companies.

As soon as satellite came in,

that was the end of the golden era of children's television.

Often the funding for the cable stations came from the States,

so you've got the rules of business now operating

as distinct from the idea of service.

Increasingly the child audience were seen as consumers,

as TV shows were created to sell toys, games and books.

And in this new era of children's television,

appetites are fed on demand and round the clock.

When we were doing it, kids watched for about an hour and a half.

It rolled over into the news,

it rolled into reasonable current affairs and I think kids got

a better chance of getting a nice rounded education, not from us,

but from what they saw and what they were watching at that time.

Hello.

-Do you mind a lion in your shop?

-Not at all.

I want some... Get down!

You're handing your audience something quite precious

when you're giving them entertainment aimed just for them,

because childhood is pretty short and if it works for them,

like all the programmes that we remember, they will remember it.

They'll remember it in a way you never will really with your adult viewing memory.

I'm not coming down until you give me that ball.

It was so important, children's television.

Because of its richness, it covered all aspects,

so I think it did a good service.

Do you know what I think is absolutely marvellous about

most people who've worked in different generations

of children's television?

We all think we were in the golden age.

Goodbye, children.

# I know we've come a long way

# We're changing day to day

# But tell me Where do the children play? #