Early TV Memories - Sepia Saturday

This week's Sepia Saturday prompt photograph shows a man reclining in a chair by a television set.  I have chosen to look back at my own early  television memories.  

 

1953 was the year television came to our house in the shape of a small 10 inch screen Bush set, so we could watch the Queen Elizabeth’s II  Coronation on June 2nd.   I was nine years old and had been busy making red, white and blue decorations at school, creating a Coronation Scrapbook, collecting my Coronation Mug  (presented to all children)  and playing with the doll my talented mother had made for me -  dressed as the Queen with a white satin dress and long velvet purple train, embroidered in gold thread.  

 

Sadly I kept neither the doll nor the scrapbook   - something I much later regretted, but I still have the official  programme and the mug. 

 

 

 

       

 

So On the day itself we woke up to the news on the radio that Mount Everest had been conquered by Sir Edmnd Hilary and Sherpa Tensing.    We watched the coronation procession and ceremony on our new  black and white TV - one of the first in the  street, with a full household of my grandad, aunt, uncle and neighbours crowding round the small 10 inch screen.  I wore  my yellow taffeta party dress,  with its puff sleeves and long sash,  in honour of the occasion.

A few weeks later we all trooped in a long crocodile from school to a local cinema to see a film of the conquering of Everest (some of the scenes of men crossing deep ravines frightened me), followed by a film  of the coronation, this time  in glorious technicolour. 

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In those days, there was only one television channel and broadcasts were generally just in the evening, introduced by the announcers in dinner jackets (Macdonald Hobley) and evening dress (Sylvia Peters and Mary Malcolm) - talking in  what seemed very pucka la-di-da accents to someone from the North of England. If we switched on too early we got the test card with the little girl with long hair in the centre.  The interludes were as much a delight - the potter's wheel, or horses ploughing a field. 

 

Children's TV seemed to centre on puppets - Muffin the Mule and Sooty (with the spin off toys as Christmas present). I must surely have been too old for Andy Pandy, and Bill and Ben the Flower Pot Men, but perhaps saw them with my younger brother. The forerunner of family soaps The Grove Family and The Appleyards were also favourites; as were were Billy Bunter's Schooldays (I had a crush on Bob Cherry), George Lansdale from London Zoo on Looking at Animals, and Crackerjack, with its Double or Drop challenge. 

 

Saturday and Sunday were treats in that we had tea on the trolley around the television to watch such programmes as the Lone Ranger (Tonto and Hiya Silver!) and Circus Boy - my brother's favourites, and All Your Own presented by Huw Weldon and introducing talented youngsters.

 

Then there were the memorable BBC Sunday serials which we enjoyed so much as a family and which fostered my love of history, costume and reading the classics - Children of the New Forest, David Copperfield, Nicholas Nickelby, Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, Count of Monte Chrsto, Railway Children, Pride and Prejudice, Worzel Gummidge. Robin Hood, Emil and the Detectives, and The Silver Sword - which told the story of children caught up in Poland during the war - a time close enough to have meaning of what living during the war must have been like. 

 

When the new ITV channel first came on the scene, our old television could not receive it, so I missed out on the school gossip of the previous night's Emergency Ward Ten and Coronation Street, though once we got a new set, I later became fans along with the other soap Compact, set on a woman's magazine - I was an avid follower of that.

The BBC was the natural channel for current affairs and we always had the news on and special coverage to see Yuri Gargarin, the first man in space, the Amercan space launches, and ocean splash downs; major events such as royal weddings, funeral of Sir Winston Churchill,  assassination of John F. Kennedy. Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. By the time of the first man in the moon, we set the alarm to get up during the middle of the night to see the "first step", and then dashed into the garden to look up at the moon in the sky.

Two programmes my father absolutely refused to have on were the new satirical comedy show "That was the Week that Was" and irreverent comedy Till Death Us Part - the previews were enough for him to ban them. He always had to watch the current affairs programme Panorama - until they were showing a programme on maternity care when he suddenly decided this was not family viewing.

Pop Culture passed me by and I was never into it, though I remember 6.5 Special and Top of the Pops. Of course everything I saw was in black and white, and I did not see colour TV until 1970 which I think was when it reached Scotland. 

American programmes came into vogue:
Doctor Kildare - my favourite
Phil Silvers - my father's  favourite

Perry Como Show  
 Dick van Dyke Show
Jack Benny Show
George Burns and Gracie Allan
I love Lucy

But I was enough of a TV teenager to compile a scrapbook topour over, with cuttings of cast lists and photographs of my favourite actors and performers I had crushes on, 

 

 A hapapy family c. 1953

 

 

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Sepia Saturday gives an opportunity for genealogy bloggers  

to share their family history and memories through photographs

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Click  HERE  to see  posts from other Sepia Saturday bloggers.

 

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