Carl Tyler's Blog

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Yes, pure nostalgia can be found at http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/ilove/tv/index.shtml, I would hate to think how many hours of my childhood were spent looking at this test card, waiting for the a program to start, probably almost as many as my Dad spent behind the TV, fiddling and replacing valves trying to get the picture to his liking.

In fact many hours were spent holding a large mirror in front of the TV so that my Dad could take the back off it to try and fix something or other whilst still being able to see his progresson the screen. I don't think my Dad was quite the norm when it came to our TV, he was a bit of a perfectionist with the picture, and I'm pretty sure if you could still get the replacement valves today, they'd still have the same TV.

Watching my Dad take stuff apart and fix it though did give me a bit of false security on electrical gadgets, he made it look so easy and 9 times out of 10, if we gave him something electrical that was broken he would fix it. So why the false sense of security? Well I had watched my Dad take things apart and put things together again so many times, I assumed that I had learnt through osmosis, turns out my Dad had training in this stuff and I hadn't, so over time I have had more and more electrical goods get taken apart and put back together again only to find a pile of unused screws left on the table and a gadget that doesn't work anymore.

My latest repair job was a Toshiba Laptop where I resoldered the power input onto the motherboard and the fix worked! But where the hell did these 10 little screws come from? I think Toshiba over engineered it planning for just such an idiot as myself. If I was smart I would have stopped trying to repair things myself the first time I electrocuted myself fixing my washing machine.

Anyway back to the real story as it isn't about my Dad, it's about this BBC site, growing up in England, our viewing options were very limited, but what viewing we had I always thought was excellent but then I didn't know any different, this site has some clips of the great shows (it even has all the Roobarb episodes!!!), so if you want to know what some of my favourite childhood BBC programs were here they are:

• Bagpuss
• Andy Pandy
• Blue Peter
• Camblewick Green
• The Great Egg Race
• Blakes 7
• Captain Pugwash
• The Goodies
• Ivor the Engine
• Roobarb
• Why Don't You (the early ones)
• The Clangers
• Dr Who
• The Wombles

To name just a few, and this doesn't include the Saturday afternoon lineup of Tom and Jerry, The Pink Panther, to be followed later in the evening by the Wonderful Word of Disney. We also had regular re-runs of Harold Lloyd to enjoy, boy the BBC went to no expense.

Does anyone else remember "Wordy" from a primary school BBC show? The little guy had no legs, and looked like a Golf Ball typewriter head?