'Rag, Tag & Bobtail' was a staple piece of animation - or puppetry as it was then - from a 'lucky dip' BBC series called 'Watch With Mother'. And you couldn't get a much stuffier, more fuddy-duddy title than that.
It took turns with other staples which included 'Bill and Ben', 'The Wooden Tops' and 'Andy Pandy'.
My parents did not get a television until the late 1950's, so this programme had already been well established by then. In its time, and viewed on a tiny 12-inch black & white screen, this daily series was the height of fascination and excitement for telly-tots, and I confess to being an avid fan. Though Andy Pandy was a bit of a drag (in more ways than one), RTB was something that stopped the infant world for a quarter of an hour, every time it was screened.
The male narrator had a classic BBC 'establishment' voice, like that of an indulgent grammar-school headmaster. To this day I can still hear his smooth, silky pronouncements at the back of my mind.
Three little animals having a fifteen-minute adventure. And why not? No violence, no excess, no appeals to our meaner vices, no bad language. How it surely should be for kids.
A few years later the theme was taken-up even more imaginatively in 'Tales Of The River Bank' with the sadly-missed and quite irreplacable Johnny Morris.
Today's kids worry about anorexia, discuss homosexuality, and get mugged for their mobile phones. Not much innocence for them. Tales From The Sperm Bank, more like; considering how many are conceived by IVF.
'Goodbye Rag, Goodby Tag, Goodby Bobtail'.
Ah; I think it's time for a nap.
It took turns with other staples which included 'Bill and Ben', 'The Wooden Tops' and 'Andy Pandy'.
My parents did not get a television until the late 1950's, so this programme had already been well established by then. In its time, and viewed on a tiny 12-inch black & white screen, this daily series was the height of fascination and excitement for telly-tots, and I confess to being an avid fan. Though Andy Pandy was a bit of a drag (in more ways than one), RTB was something that stopped the infant world for a quarter of an hour, every time it was screened.
The male narrator had a classic BBC 'establishment' voice, like that of an indulgent grammar-school headmaster. To this day I can still hear his smooth, silky pronouncements at the back of my mind.
Three little animals having a fifteen-minute adventure. And why not? No violence, no excess, no appeals to our meaner vices, no bad language. How it surely should be for kids.
A few years later the theme was taken-up even more imaginatively in 'Tales Of The River Bank' with the sadly-missed and quite irreplacable Johnny Morris.
Today's kids worry about anorexia, discuss homosexuality, and get mugged for their mobile phones. Not much innocence for them. Tales From The Sperm Bank, more like; considering how many are conceived by IVF.
'Goodbye Rag, Goodby Tag, Goodby Bobtail'.
Ah; I think it's time for a nap.
