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WHAT WAS IT?
A chummy cartoon canary with Bernard Cribbins’ voice and a penchant
for phoning his mum, which was handy seeing as he was the official mascot
for British Telecom in the days before it flogged off all its shares to
anyone with fifty pence or more in the bank and was still Owned by the
Nation.
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WHY SHOULD IT COME BACK?
There’s just something undeniably endearing about a government-controlled
organisation deciding to embody itself in the form of a cuddly, chummy
anthropomorphic pal (see also the Milk Marketing Board’s British
Cheese Men, or the Royal Mail’s Union Jack-vested philatelic Stamp
Bug). We’re sure a new age of respect and trust for our rulers would
soon follow if, say, the daunting edifice of the DTI was adorned with
the friendly visage of Melvyn the Manufacturing Mole, and DSS press releases
could be lightened up no end with The Adventures of Benjy the Benefits
Badger.
- WHAT WAS IT?
The corporation’s very own home computer. Released in 1981, for
a few years it popped up on almost every BBC1 programme going (even implausibly
doubling as the TARDIS computer in an episode of Doctor Who). In
the real world, you would mostly find it in the home of bearded academics
or young would-be programmers. However its real ubiquity was in the arena
of academia. The BBC Micro made its way into almost every school in the
land – not that teacher ever allowed you to play with it mind.
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WHY SHOULD IT COME BACK?
Because hobbyists and boffins deserve their own home computer too. Because
if you’ve never played Suburban Fox you’ve never lived. And
because without the BBC Micro there wouldn’t have been the ill-fated
1986 Domesday Project.
- WHAT WAS IT?
The godfather of the Nectar Card, in the 1970s these perforated mint tokens
were liberally distributed alongside every transaction at supermarkets
and petrol stations as a promotional incentive. At their peak, the Green
Shield Stamp almost acted as an alternative national currency, enabling
collectors to dutifully stick them into albums which could be bartered
for a tantalising array of household goods, like toasters and pressure
cookers, at their neighbourhood "redemption centre". It was just like
being on the Generation Game conveyor belt!
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WHY SHOULD IT COME BACK?
Because a generation raised on Air Miles has been denied the thrill of
licking and sticking a hundredweight of Green Shield Stamps that have
been clogging up the glove compartment of your dad's Morris Marina for
the last month, and gazing longingly through the latest Green Shield Stamps
catalogue, hoping for a Spirograph and pondering just who would be able
to collect enough of the things to acquire a new speedboat.
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WHAT WAS IT?
’Two comics in one – double the fun!’ The simple concept
of splitting a common-or-garden comic into two 'rival' sections –
perhaps the inspiration for the Sunday Times – was a masterstroke.
For 21 years, the nation's kids nailed their colours to the mast and proclaimed
themselves either a Whizz-kid (official colour: red; leader: Sid, an unexceptional
kid with a pet snake) or a Chip-ite (official colour: blue; leader: Shiner,
a hapless boy who couldn't help getting into scrapes).
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WHY SHOULD IT COME BACK?
The all-conquering Beano and Dandy aside, kids' comics as
a genre seem to have disappeared from our shelves in recent years. A generation
of children are therefore detached from a world of dodges and capers,
and will remain forever ignorant of the word 'yikes'. In the 1970s and
1980s, Whizzer and Chips was the epitome of the fun paper, offering
up school dinner-sized portions of laughs for the price of an Aztec bar.
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WHAT WAS IT?
A regal teatime institution that fielded the Beeb's star turns to reassuringly
explain everything from ironing boards to inflation. So much more than
erratically behaved wildfowl and bespectacled eccentrics, the 'Wide was
the all-time definitive curtain-raiser for a night in front of the box.
Debuting in September 1969 with a lonely-looking Michael Barratt "co- ordinating" rickety monochrome link-ups between fledgling Beeb regional outposts armed only with a standard issue Corporation telephone, the show's three-way discussions on overheated British Rail axle boxes soon gave way to Cook of the Realm competitions, Frank Bough gently quizzing Prince Phillip and Richard Stilgoe documenting the collapse of the British economy through song. Affable, freewheeling and able to switch from matters trivial to tragic with dignified ease, Nationwide was beans-on-toast TV at its best.
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WHY SHOULD IT COME BACK?
Since its demise there's never been anything on telly at that time of
day that's done its job anywhere near as well - fact. Whether the pitfalls
of climbing Snowdon or the price of a stamp, the show cheerily set about
charting an entire way of British life that TV can't be doing with anymore,
and that's a real shame.
Mike, Frank and co managed to become one big family of friendly faces, and at their peak you felt the country was safe in their hands. During the three-day week they even sought to revive the population's spirits with the cry '1973 – Was it Really that Bad?' So let's raise a cheer for Nationwide, the greatest teatime tonic TV has ever served, and demand its return forthwith. After all, what's not to like about, say, Dermot Murnaghan segueing between the National Nursing Awards and a Christmas Carol competition? Bring it back now!