Apparently the BBC are considering bringing back the test card overnight in order to save £1.3 billion. According to a recent Daily Mail report, one proposal is for BBC 1 and BBC 2 to terminate broadcasting at 1am for several hours during the night. Will this also mean the return of the playing of the National Anthem at closing down time?

Will this also herald a return to the test card, the static image put on screen when channels were off air in the 1960s and 1970s? The BBC’s distinctive “Test Card F” image of the little girl with a toy clown, playing noughts and crosses on the blackboard was first used in 1967 and became an icon of the 1970s.

The image of the iconic Test Card immediately transport me back to my childhood and my favourite TV programmes. The BBC Test card would appear at various times of the day, but inbetween their were interludes of kids programmes. If my memory serves me correctly, in the mid mornings there were programmes like “White Horses” and “Skippy”, the tale of a mischievious Australian Bush Kangaroo. Of course this was in an era pre-dating Breakfast TV, so these were the first TV show broadcasts of the day. At lunchtime there were programmes for younger kids like “Pogle’s Wood”, “Mr Ben”, “Camberwick Green” and the neighbouring “Trumpton” featuring the legendary Windy Miller!! There would then be a gap in broadcasting, filled by the motionless Test Card, before Children’s TV would alight on our screens. Although not all of these programmes were on the BBC, children in the 1970s were occupied by “Blue Peter” and it’s ITV counterpart “Magpie” – although the latter was not as highbrow, these were the educational programmes!! After that it was pure entertainment courtesy of Gerry Anderson’s puppet stable of “Thunderbirds”, “Captain Scarlet”, “Stingray”, “UFO” and “Joe 90”. Then there the wacky shows like “Double Deckers”, “Banana Splits” and “Catweazle”. And of course there was the clever trick photography and filming in the incomparable “Land of the Giants”. Not to mention “Vision On” with Tony Hart and his plasticine friends, Johnny Morris talking to zoo animals on “Animal Magic” and papercutting patterns on “Origami”.

No Children’s TV afternoon was complete without an American Hanna Barbera cartoon such as the pre-historic “Flintstones”, the ghost hunting “Scooby Doo”, the cheeky “Top Cat” or “Wacky Races” where every week we willed Dick Dastardly and his loveable sidekick Muttley across that finishing line!! Of course it never happened – normally it was Little Miss Perfect, Penelope Pitstop who prevailed.

In the 1970s, Children’s TV came to an end with ahead of the News at 5-45pm, a 5 minute helping of the psychedelic, trippy “Magic Roundabout” – it’s 1960s drug influenced characterisation and script going over heads of the junior viewer!! If Dougal the Dog, Florence, Brian the Snail, Ermintrude the Cow, Dylan and Zebedee were off their faces, they were in good company with the woollen puppets in “The Clangers”!! And then there was the dubious set up in “Hector’s House”, where a dog named Hector co-habited in a cosy menage a trois with Za Za the Cat and Kiki the Frog. Personally I found the programme very creepy and sinister, not helped by dubious, dodgy dubbing from German!! Other shows bringing down the curtain on Children’s TV in the 1970s were “Crystal Tips and Alastair”, “Parsley the Lion” and “Captain Pugwash”, with it’s adult sexual references which would be unimaginable in these politically correct times!!

Early evenings in the late 1960s and early 1970s gave the older child a feast of adventure series like the suave Simon Templar aka Roger Moore in “The Saint” and the equally debonair and urbane Patrick MacNee as John Steed in surreal “The Avengers”, ably supported by Diana Rigg as Emma Peel, later replaced by Linda Thorson’s character Tara King. Another favourite was “The Champions”, whose three spy protagonists communicated through extra sensory perception. Just as wacky were the foppish, cravate wearing dandy, Jason King ( Peter Wyngarde ) in “Department S” and “Mission Impossible” with it’s self destructing taped messages!! As if this wasn’t enough, as the 1960s became the 1970s, we were treated to Roger Moore and Tony Curtis as Lord Brett Sinclair and Danny Wilde respectively in “The Persuaders” and Robert Vaughan, Nyree Dawn Porter and Tony Anholt in “The Protectors”.

The early evening schedule on a Saturday gave us the reassuring presence of John Pertwee as “Dr Who” and Jack Warner as “Dixon of Dock Green”…….somehow the world seemed a safer place with them around, fighting alien creatures, Daleks, Cybermen and criminals and villains on our behalf!! That’s the beauty of nostalgia….it masks the defects and dons a wonderful pair of rose tinted spectacles that Elton John or Timmy Mallett would have been proud to wear in their  pomp!! This blog article has served no useful purpose other than to unashamedly reminisce about Children’s TV in the 1970s……I hope you have enjoyed the trip down Memory’s Cobbled Lane……and don’t get me onto the Hovis TV Commercials, not to mention “Mild Green Fairy Liquid”, “For Mash Get Smash” and “All because the Lady loves Milk Tray”……….that’s for another day and another roadtrip on the Memory Motorway………