Sunday 16 November 2014

13 Jackanory



First  watched : Uncertain

Almost  certainly my  first  day  at  school  was  7th  September  1969  and  that's  as  good  a  time  as  any  to  start  bringing  in  the  teatime  programmes  after  Play  School  although  some  of  them  still  ring  no  bells  at  all.

Jackanory  was  a  permanent  fixture  on  kids  TV  from  1965  to  1996  and  has  been  revived  in  all  but  name  on  Ceebeebies. The  concept  was  ultra-simple  , a  seated  celebrity  ( usually  an  actor ) read  a  children's  book  abridged  to  fit  five  15  minute  slots,  interspersed  with  illustrations from  an  over-worked in-house team  or  free lance  illustrators. In  later  years  they  introduced  special  effects  and  more  dynamic performances in  an  attempt  to  stave  off  an  inexorable  decline in  viewing  figures  but I was  long  gone  by  then. I think  my  break  with it  was  probably  enforced  in  September 1976  when  I  started  attending  a  secondary  school some  six  miles  away  and wasn't  back  in  time  for  the  start.

I  find  it  hard  to  believe  it  was  anyone's  favourite  programme. In  general  I  found  it  unengaging  . a  good  excuse  to  concentrate  on  eating  your  tea, but  occasionally  it  would  catch  my  interest , usually  if  it  was  featuring  a  book  from  a  series  in  which  I  was  already  interested. I  remember  Moominsummer  Madness  featuring  in  the  summer  of  1974  just  after  I'd  purchased  it.  The  only  book  I  can  recall  it  directly  turning  me  on  to  was  Erik  Linklater's  The  Wind  On  The  Moon but  I  also  enjoyed  the  stories  featuring  Mortimer  the  Raven  and  had  my  suggestion  we  read  one  of  the  books  as  a  class  when  it  turned  up  in  the  school  library  accepted.

On  7th  September  1969  the  featured  book  was  The  Founding  of  Evil  Hold  School , the  first, recently  published, book  by  White  Russian  fanatic  and  perennial  UKIP  candidate, Nikolai Tolstoy   and  from  the  synposis  sounds  like  an  anti-communist  allegory. The  reader  was  Kenneth  Williams, one  of  twelve  separate  stints  the  Carry  On  actor  did  on  the  show.

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