Left to right - Twizzle, Double Your Money and Jill Browne from Emergency Ward 10
TV Heaven (And Hell) - Part One
Anybody who grew up with a television in their family will have had their lives affected by it in some way or other.
Some programmes leave a lasting impression, long after the bulk of them have vanished into obscurity. The idea behind this section is to look at some of the programmes that made my TV heaven or TV hell. So here we go.
Twizzle
Early TV memories have to be dredged up from somewhere inside and trying to remember your first ever television programme is virtually impossible. For instance I remember a ridiculous cartoon character called Twizzle. Now through the wonders of the internet I am able to re-live those days and find out just what attracted me to some of these strange programmes.
Twizzle was a doll with the ability to extend its arms and legs to amazing lengths. He lived in a toy shop but at 2s 6d was just too expensive to buy - until Sally Cross comes in and purchases him for two shillings.
The importance of Twizzle is it stopped puppeteer Gerry Anderson from going bankrupt. It was 1957 and I was just five years old when dear old Gerry changed directions, lost his credibility as a film-maker but turned into a family entertainer.
The first episode of The Adventures of Twizzle was broadcast on November 13th, 1957 at 4.30 pm. I suspect I was there sitting on the floor (as I usually did) to see this ground-breaking show. The show also led to the meeting of Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Thamm who later became Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Of course I wasn't aware of any of this lovey-dovey stuff going down. I was more likely to believe that a doll could twist himself (and sorry to have to say that my recollections were that Twizzle was a girl) up to huge heights. That was much more likely than people "falling in love" whatever that was.
I believe that my presents for Christmas 1957 included a Twizzle annual. I just had one of those "I wonder what happened to that and how much would it be worth if I had kept it?" moments. Well the answer is not a lot apparently. As I build up my television heaven (and hell) I will often refer to the e-bay auction site.
A visit there showed that a Twizzle adventure book was going for £3.99, an early annual for £1.99, but there had been no bids, and a Twizzle puppet described as having "strings in a terrible tangle and a missing box due to the seller moving house when a bit of the back of Twizzle's hat also went missing" was going for just £21. Original episodes of Twizzle cost all of £450! The seller goes on to explain just who Twizzle is (or was). I can't imagine anybody would buy a string tangled puppet without knowing anything about it. But moving swiftly on to cover over the fact that I remember nothing else about Twizzle. We come to (fanfare).
Emergency Ward 10
Basically it scared me shitless although I fancied Jill Browne something rotten. Now this to me was probably a good thing as it was first evidence that I wasn't going to be gay (or queer as it was referred to in those days). Now let me say right here and now that I have absolutely no problem with people being gay, my comments are designed to reflect the times I am writing about (i.e at this point the 1950s.)
Emergency Ward 10 was Britain's first medical soap and the first to be aired twice a week - on Tuesdays and Fridays. It had a ridiculous average audience of 16 million people and a high of 24 million. The first episode aired in February 1957 thus preceding Twizzle by almost nine months and maybe bringing it the glorious title of my first television memory.
So what exactly do I remember about it (apart from Jill Browne). Well I remember the frighteningly horrible and tense opening credits. I remember the lurid medical scenes and worst of all the operations. In fact I blame it entirely for my hatred of hospitals, medical matters in general and destroying any illusions I might have had to become a doctor. Being a train driver had to be preferable to being knee deep in blood, guts and gore. Not that the medical staff were knee deep in blood, guts and gore of course.
When you are young everything seems to get magnified and when the TV Heaven website tells me that "although the series was high in drama it had a very low mortality rate and patients deaths were limited to five per year as it concentrated more on the lives of the men and women who staffed the hospital" I really do believe it. I wonder who set the death figure and whether its something that could be adopted by real hospitals today! Obviously it's not something either Casualty or Holby City have adopted, although I hear they are both being retitled under one banner as "100 ways to get admitted to hospital."
As for Emergency Ward 10, I swear I remember limbs being amputated by large saws and a modicum of anaesthetic being used and that awful tap tap music that got into my brain. For some reason I remember a patient called Anstruther or something like that. I seem to remember he had a hook instead of a hand which was great to hang his jacket on but didn't do a great deal for a youngster getting ready for bed. I'm sure I saw Anstruther in my dreams on more than one occasion.
The programme was a breeding ground for soap stars of the future.. I will forever remember Australian Charles Tingwell as surgeon Alan Dawson and not the dreadful characters he played in Neighbours (or was it Home and Away or both?). Similarly Richard Thorp was dashing as Dr John Rennie and that's how I would rather remember him than as the exceptionally rotund Alan in Emmerdale. Jane Rossington also appeared before going on to fame? in Crossroads (more of Crossroads later). Then there was John Alderton who became a complete slimeball by marrying Jill Browne in real life, before changing her for Pauline Collins and starring in any number of sit coms including Please Sir.
Patients included Ian Hendry, Joanna Lumley and of course the geezer who played Anstruther and gave me all those nightmares.
Emergency Ward 10 lasted 10 years (that's one year for each of the emergency wards) before being taken out of the schedules amidst much gnashing of the teeth amongst fans and probably some relief on my part. It was set in Oxbridge General Hospital (wow what an original title) and has the distinction of including the first ever interracial kiss. I don't remember this so it must have had much less of an affect on me than Anstruther's hook.
A few months ago I viewed a couple of editions of the programme on You Tube and they really were very very tame. I particularly laughed at a scene where the characters are allegedly watching a tennis match. Their heads keep moving from side to side but we never actually see any tennis and it is obvious it has all been done on a line of chairs in the studio. I would be lying if I said this was acting at its very best.
But we must move on to the next piece of my TV Heaven (or Hell). It comes in the form of two very much loved quiz shows....
Double Your Money
Why is it that hideous title music always stays in the mind. I seem to remember the words for the opening song on Double Your Money went something like: "Double your money and try to get rich/Double your money without any hitch/Double your money it's your lucky day/Double your money and take it away."
Double Your Money was revived a few years ago by Ant and Dec but it had none of the power of the original - or perhaps once again that's me viewing it through the eyes of a young child when the world was new and quite an exciting place to inhabit.
I seem to remember that Double Your Money consisted of contestants being asked a series of questions on a chosen subject by quizmaster Hughie Green. The first question was worth £1, the second £2 and so on. Most were limited to six questions and a maximum take home of £32. But hold on here we are talking about the 1950s so £32 would probably be the equivalent of something like £1.7 million today (actually probably about £500 - editor's note)..
The £1 question was always an hilariously funny one (Actually occasionally it bordered on the vaguely amusing). It wasn't possible to get it wrong. Obviously the jolly crew who wrote the questions ran out of merry £1 japes because I remember an appeal going out for people to send in their own for a prize (I have long since forgotten exactly what this was). My grandfather took up the challenge with the belt busting gardening question: "Is blue cabbage, green grocery." I might only have been a handful of years old at the time but it certainly didn't have me clutching my middle in mirth. Obviously the DYM jolly japesters agreed as it never appeared on the show!
Each show a contestant returned to go even further than the £32. They were placed in a sealed off box that looked as if it had been put together from an MFI kit. They wore a set of huge headphones through which they received the question. On their first visit they got multiple questions to take their total to £64 and then £125. Which just illustrates that the name of the show was wrong. If it truly had been Double Your Money it would have gone up through £64 to £128 to £256 to £512 to £1,024. In reality it was £64, £125, £250, £500 and £1000. Today I expect it would be charged with something or other under the trades description act. That's if Health and Safety didn't get the show first for that MFI box.
Contestants could of course stick at any time. To win the top prize of £1,000 would take four additional visits at the end of the show. The tension was intense I can tell you. I remember one contestant vividly as Hughie Green took the p--s out of his name - never did really find out why. It was I believe Kerr but he was referred to at different times by various alternatives such as Carr or Care (absolutely side-splitting). I'm sure this guy answered questions on spelling and got the £1,000.
I had a Double Your Money game where I regularly won £1,000 simply because I soon got to know all the answers. That's probably where my interest in taking part in quizzes came from. I realised that by amassing thousands of useless facts you could appear to be intelligent!!!!!
The show was compered by Hughie Green - a very strange man who reminded me in character of Richard Nixon and I'm not sure if that's an insult to Green or Nixon. Apparently Green's genial persona only worked as long as the cameras were running "and I mean that sincerely folks."
Double Your Money ran from 1952 until 1968. Green was a tremendously genial host (on screen that is) with more facial contortions than was really good for him. He was "ably" assisted for much of the time by Monica Rose, a chirpy 4ft 9in cockney type who had originally been a contestant and who was destroyed by fame in as much as she tragically took her own life in 1994.
As for Green. Well I always had the idea that he was Canadian, but the internet has actually confirmed he was born in London but did serve in the Royal Canadian Airforce and became a Canadian citizen after the Second World War. He was later called a number of names of which dysfunctional seems to be one of the more modest. His final claim to fame before his death in 1997 was being exposed as the father of Paula Yates (but we won't go into that here).
Double Your Money actually started life on the legendary Radio Luxemburg. I say legendary because it's the only radio station in the history of broadcasting that virtually everyone of a certain age turned into but nobody heard. Anybody of that certain age will remember tuning in the dial of their transistor radio (and how trendy were they? So trendy that nowadays you can get retro digital radios that look like old trannies but play like modern machines) to attempt to get Luxemburg which seemed to come and go in a hiss of static that sent people mad holding them up in the air and moving them round the room is an attempt to get improved reception. Come on hold up your hands. If you are now over 50 you will have experienced this. I once had a request played on Radio Luxemburg by DJ "Baby" Bob Stewart (who is probably now "Granddad" Bob Stewart). I only caught a quarter of it thanks to the reception. Today's youngsters have no concept of the fun of having to stand on a chair with a radio above their heads (cue health and safety again).
But now we must leave Double Your Money to the quiz show graveyard (although I understand there were some suggestions in 2008 of it being revived) and move on to what was almost its companion programme.
Take Your Pick
If Double Your Money had Hughie Green, Take Your Pick had Michael Miles. For one show this quiz attracted an astonishing 23 million people. It started a 12 year run in 1955 and sadly I have no memory of the theme tune (which is probably a good thing, otherwise I might become type-cast). And Yes Take Your Pick also saw its debut on Radio Luxemburg (it's interesting to mentally picture contestants opening boxes on the radio).
The quiz was the brainchild of Miles who came from New Zealand and started with the ridiculous Yes/No interlude which consisted of contestants trying not to say yes or no whilst being pumped with questions from Miles. Obviously the contestants would be well prepared for this and determined to go for the full minute. So on they came:
Miles: What's your name
Contestant: Fred Snot
Miles: Did you say Fred Snot
Contestant: Yes
Not only did the luckless contestant suffer the ignominy of lasting about two seconds, they also got subjected to the sound of a gong that heralded the fact that they were officially stupid. The funny thing was they always looked surprised. Sometimes they got quite a way before Miles grilled them and hit a nerve.
Miles: So what is your favourite hobby
Male Contestant: Dressing up in women's clothes
Miles: Isn't that rather strange.
Male Contestant (in indignant voice): NO it's not
(obviously the above examples are purely made up for effect so please don't sue me).
I believe the man in charge of the gong was Bob Danvers-Walker who had a double barreled name in the days before they were fashionable. I believe he did voice overs for the legendary Pathe News.
Suddenly children in school and office workers were all playing the 60 minute yes/no interlude. It was probably the pre-cursor of Mallett's mallet (more of which later) but slightly less violent. Successful yes/no contestants returned in the second half of the show to play the actual quiz. To call it a quiz is probably a misnomer. There were only three questions to answer and I seem to remember they weren't MENSA standard. Get them wrong and off you go without so much as a gong. Get them right and you had the chance to open one of the 10 boxes.
So a box was chosen and then Miles would try to offer to buy them back with various amounts of cash. The boxes contained either one of three booby prizes, six other prizes (which I believe were shown at the beginning of the programme) or a star prize. I still remember the vicious laughs of the audience when a box was opened to reveal a stick of celery or some other equally useless prize. Also the joy on the contestant's faces when Miles uttered those immortal words "You have won tonight's star prize". The whole show was given a touch of class by the smooth voice overs from Bob Danvers-Walker. One wag on being subjected to some quite strong pressure from Miles to "Take the Money" replied with something like "I wouldn't take the money even if you offered £200 (a large sum of money in those days)." to which Miles offered £200 and the contestant immediately replied "I'll take the money." Ha ha ever been had?
In addition the audience was roped in to holler either "Take the Money" or "Open the Box". If you are really lucky you can still hear these shouts today. They turned the show into more of a gladiatorial fight. There was also the added excitement of Box 13. Each week one box was linked with Box 13. If this box was picked by the contestant their options were increased to "taking the money," "opening their original box which could contain anything from a major to a booby prize" or "opening Box 13" (which spookily could contain anything from a major to a booby prize)!
Sadly Michael Miles died at the early age of 52. There were rumours of alcohol abuse, but in reality he suffered from epilepsy. He appears to have been a much nicer character in real life than Hughie Green who regularly referred to him as "my dad."
Take Your Pick does have the distinction of being the first British television quiz show to offer money as prizes.
Now I feel a change of genre coming on as we turn to two western series.
Wagon Train and Rawhide (with apologies for talking about theme music again).
I have three memories of Rawhide. 1/ It seemed to be on television all the time 2/ It featured Clint Eastwood and 3/ It had a signature tune by Frankie Laine that somebody bought for me on a 78 and the words were something like: Rollin rollin/Keep them doggies rollen/Rawhide. Never could understand where the dogs came into the equation. Anyway I have since found that the above lyrics weren't quite spot on but there's too little time to bother about that at the moment.
Rawhide ran from 1959 to 1966 and surrounds the movement of cattle from Missouri to Texas (I know this as I looked it up on the internet). Of course as I was only seven years old at the time I had no idea about the geographic sensibilities or the distances involved or the point of it all. No I was more impressed with the old can that Clint Eastwood used to drink out of (or am I getting mixed up with Wagon Train already?).
Apparently only about 200 head of cattle were used in the filming to represent the herd of 3,000. They must have run around a bit in order to look like a real crowd. I can't remember a single storyline but what the heck. I do know that Eastwood played the part of Rowdy Yates. Couldn't understand that first name as I thought it meant he was rather incontrollable - probably had a brother called Rowdy Behaviour.
At the end of each episode the boss used the immortal words "Move em on/Head em out" which was probably the signal for my mother to make a cup of tea!
Wagon Train seemed much more ridiculous. At least I could see some point in driving cattle along even if I did think the drovers were employed to take them for a run to tire them out before bedtime. But Wagon Train - well that was another kettle of fish altogether. It ran from 1957 until 1965. It starred Ward Bond long before he began making tea bags. He was the trail boss until he messed things up by dying in 1960 and having to be replaced - American series had a habit of just replacing people with no explanation whatsoever. They just changed looks, height, weight etc and we carried on watching.
To me the old train just used to ride around a bit (on horseback of course) and then stop and get surrounded by Indians, kill most of them and then move on and ride around a bit (on horseback of course) and then stop and get surrounded by Indians, kill most of them and then move on and ride around (you probably get the idea by now). So swiftly side-stepping Wagon Train it's time to move on to some comedy which will appear in part two.
Anybody who grew up with a television in their family will have had their lives affected by it in some way or other.
Some programmes leave a lasting impression, long after the bulk of them have vanished into obscurity. The idea behind this section is to look at some of the programmes that made my TV heaven or TV hell. So here we go.
Twizzle
Early TV memories have to be dredged up from somewhere inside and trying to remember your first ever television programme is virtually impossible. For instance I remember a ridiculous cartoon character called Twizzle. Now through the wonders of the internet I am able to re-live those days and find out just what attracted me to some of these strange programmes.
Twizzle was a doll with the ability to extend its arms and legs to amazing lengths. He lived in a toy shop but at 2s 6d was just too expensive to buy - until Sally Cross comes in and purchases him for two shillings.
The importance of Twizzle is it stopped puppeteer Gerry Anderson from going bankrupt. It was 1957 and I was just five years old when dear old Gerry changed directions, lost his credibility as a film-maker but turned into a family entertainer.
The first episode of The Adventures of Twizzle was broadcast on November 13th, 1957 at 4.30 pm. I suspect I was there sitting on the floor (as I usually did) to see this ground-breaking show. The show also led to the meeting of Gerry Anderson and Sylvia Thamm who later became Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Of course I wasn't aware of any of this lovey-dovey stuff going down. I was more likely to believe that a doll could twist himself (and sorry to have to say that my recollections were that Twizzle was a girl) up to huge heights. That was much more likely than people "falling in love" whatever that was.
I believe that my presents for Christmas 1957 included a Twizzle annual. I just had one of those "I wonder what happened to that and how much would it be worth if I had kept it?" moments. Well the answer is not a lot apparently. As I build up my television heaven (and hell) I will often refer to the e-bay auction site.
A visit there showed that a Twizzle adventure book was going for £3.99, an early annual for £1.99, but there had been no bids, and a Twizzle puppet described as having "strings in a terrible tangle and a missing box due to the seller moving house when a bit of the back of Twizzle's hat also went missing" was going for just £21. Original episodes of Twizzle cost all of £450! The seller goes on to explain just who Twizzle is (or was). I can't imagine anybody would buy a string tangled puppet without knowing anything about it. But moving swiftly on to cover over the fact that I remember nothing else about Twizzle. We come to (fanfare).
Emergency Ward 10
Basically it scared me shitless although I fancied Jill Browne something rotten. Now this to me was probably a good thing as it was first evidence that I wasn't going to be gay (or queer as it was referred to in those days). Now let me say right here and now that I have absolutely no problem with people being gay, my comments are designed to reflect the times I am writing about (i.e at this point the 1950s.)
Emergency Ward 10 was Britain's first medical soap and the first to be aired twice a week - on Tuesdays and Fridays. It had a ridiculous average audience of 16 million people and a high of 24 million. The first episode aired in February 1957 thus preceding Twizzle by almost nine months and maybe bringing it the glorious title of my first television memory.
So what exactly do I remember about it (apart from Jill Browne). Well I remember the frighteningly horrible and tense opening credits. I remember the lurid medical scenes and worst of all the operations. In fact I blame it entirely for my hatred of hospitals, medical matters in general and destroying any illusions I might have had to become a doctor. Being a train driver had to be preferable to being knee deep in blood, guts and gore. Not that the medical staff were knee deep in blood, guts and gore of course.
When you are young everything seems to get magnified and when the TV Heaven website tells me that "although the series was high in drama it had a very low mortality rate and patients deaths were limited to five per year as it concentrated more on the lives of the men and women who staffed the hospital" I really do believe it. I wonder who set the death figure and whether its something that could be adopted by real hospitals today! Obviously it's not something either Casualty or Holby City have adopted, although I hear they are both being retitled under one banner as "100 ways to get admitted to hospital."
As for Emergency Ward 10, I swear I remember limbs being amputated by large saws and a modicum of anaesthetic being used and that awful tap tap music that got into my brain. For some reason I remember a patient called Anstruther or something like that. I seem to remember he had a hook instead of a hand which was great to hang his jacket on but didn't do a great deal for a youngster getting ready for bed. I'm sure I saw Anstruther in my dreams on more than one occasion.
The programme was a breeding ground for soap stars of the future.. I will forever remember Australian Charles Tingwell as surgeon Alan Dawson and not the dreadful characters he played in Neighbours (or was it Home and Away or both?). Similarly Richard Thorp was dashing as Dr John Rennie and that's how I would rather remember him than as the exceptionally rotund Alan in Emmerdale. Jane Rossington also appeared before going on to fame? in Crossroads (more of Crossroads later). Then there was John Alderton who became a complete slimeball by marrying Jill Browne in real life, before changing her for Pauline Collins and starring in any number of sit coms including Please Sir.
Patients included Ian Hendry, Joanna Lumley and of course the geezer who played Anstruther and gave me all those nightmares.
Emergency Ward 10 lasted 10 years (that's one year for each of the emergency wards) before being taken out of the schedules amidst much gnashing of the teeth amongst fans and probably some relief on my part. It was set in Oxbridge General Hospital (wow what an original title) and has the distinction of including the first ever interracial kiss. I don't remember this so it must have had much less of an affect on me than Anstruther's hook.
A few months ago I viewed a couple of editions of the programme on You Tube and they really were very very tame. I particularly laughed at a scene where the characters are allegedly watching a tennis match. Their heads keep moving from side to side but we never actually see any tennis and it is obvious it has all been done on a line of chairs in the studio. I would be lying if I said this was acting at its very best.
But we must move on to the next piece of my TV Heaven (or Hell). It comes in the form of two very much loved quiz shows....
Double Your Money
Why is it that hideous title music always stays in the mind. I seem to remember the words for the opening song on Double Your Money went something like: "Double your money and try to get rich/Double your money without any hitch/Double your money it's your lucky day/Double your money and take it away."
Double Your Money was revived a few years ago by Ant and Dec but it had none of the power of the original - or perhaps once again that's me viewing it through the eyes of a young child when the world was new and quite an exciting place to inhabit.
I seem to remember that Double Your Money consisted of contestants being asked a series of questions on a chosen subject by quizmaster Hughie Green. The first question was worth £1, the second £2 and so on. Most were limited to six questions and a maximum take home of £32. But hold on here we are talking about the 1950s so £32 would probably be the equivalent of something like £1.7 million today (actually probably about £500 - editor's note)..
The £1 question was always an hilariously funny one (Actually occasionally it bordered on the vaguely amusing). It wasn't possible to get it wrong. Obviously the jolly crew who wrote the questions ran out of merry £1 japes because I remember an appeal going out for people to send in their own for a prize (I have long since forgotten exactly what this was). My grandfather took up the challenge with the belt busting gardening question: "Is blue cabbage, green grocery." I might only have been a handful of years old at the time but it certainly didn't have me clutching my middle in mirth. Obviously the DYM jolly japesters agreed as it never appeared on the show!
Each show a contestant returned to go even further than the £32. They were placed in a sealed off box that looked as if it had been put together from an MFI kit. They wore a set of huge headphones through which they received the question. On their first visit they got multiple questions to take their total to £64 and then £125. Which just illustrates that the name of the show was wrong. If it truly had been Double Your Money it would have gone up through £64 to £128 to £256 to £512 to £1,024. In reality it was £64, £125, £250, £500 and £1000. Today I expect it would be charged with something or other under the trades description act. That's if Health and Safety didn't get the show first for that MFI box.
Contestants could of course stick at any time. To win the top prize of £1,000 would take four additional visits at the end of the show. The tension was intense I can tell you. I remember one contestant vividly as Hughie Green took the p--s out of his name - never did really find out why. It was I believe Kerr but he was referred to at different times by various alternatives such as Carr or Care (absolutely side-splitting). I'm sure this guy answered questions on spelling and got the £1,000.
I had a Double Your Money game where I regularly won £1,000 simply because I soon got to know all the answers. That's probably where my interest in taking part in quizzes came from. I realised that by amassing thousands of useless facts you could appear to be intelligent!!!!!
The show was compered by Hughie Green - a very strange man who reminded me in character of Richard Nixon and I'm not sure if that's an insult to Green or Nixon. Apparently Green's genial persona only worked as long as the cameras were running "and I mean that sincerely folks."
Double Your Money ran from 1952 until 1968. Green was a tremendously genial host (on screen that is) with more facial contortions than was really good for him. He was "ably" assisted for much of the time by Monica Rose, a chirpy 4ft 9in cockney type who had originally been a contestant and who was destroyed by fame in as much as she tragically took her own life in 1994.
As for Green. Well I always had the idea that he was Canadian, but the internet has actually confirmed he was born in London but did serve in the Royal Canadian Airforce and became a Canadian citizen after the Second World War. He was later called a number of names of which dysfunctional seems to be one of the more modest. His final claim to fame before his death in 1997 was being exposed as the father of Paula Yates (but we won't go into that here).
Double Your Money actually started life on the legendary Radio Luxemburg. I say legendary because it's the only radio station in the history of broadcasting that virtually everyone of a certain age turned into but nobody heard. Anybody of that certain age will remember tuning in the dial of their transistor radio (and how trendy were they? So trendy that nowadays you can get retro digital radios that look like old trannies but play like modern machines) to attempt to get Luxemburg which seemed to come and go in a hiss of static that sent people mad holding them up in the air and moving them round the room is an attempt to get improved reception. Come on hold up your hands. If you are now over 50 you will have experienced this. I once had a request played on Radio Luxemburg by DJ "Baby" Bob Stewart (who is probably now "Granddad" Bob Stewart). I only caught a quarter of it thanks to the reception. Today's youngsters have no concept of the fun of having to stand on a chair with a radio above their heads (cue health and safety again).
But now we must leave Double Your Money to the quiz show graveyard (although I understand there were some suggestions in 2008 of it being revived) and move on to what was almost its companion programme.
Take Your Pick
If Double Your Money had Hughie Green, Take Your Pick had Michael Miles. For one show this quiz attracted an astonishing 23 million people. It started a 12 year run in 1955 and sadly I have no memory of the theme tune (which is probably a good thing, otherwise I might become type-cast). And Yes Take Your Pick also saw its debut on Radio Luxemburg (it's interesting to mentally picture contestants opening boxes on the radio).
The quiz was the brainchild of Miles who came from New Zealand and started with the ridiculous Yes/No interlude which consisted of contestants trying not to say yes or no whilst being pumped with questions from Miles. Obviously the contestants would be well prepared for this and determined to go for the full minute. So on they came:
Miles: What's your name
Contestant: Fred Snot
Miles: Did you say Fred Snot
Contestant: Yes
Not only did the luckless contestant suffer the ignominy of lasting about two seconds, they also got subjected to the sound of a gong that heralded the fact that they were officially stupid. The funny thing was they always looked surprised. Sometimes they got quite a way before Miles grilled them and hit a nerve.
Miles: So what is your favourite hobby
Male Contestant: Dressing up in women's clothes
Miles: Isn't that rather strange.
Male Contestant (in indignant voice): NO it's not
(obviously the above examples are purely made up for effect so please don't sue me).
I believe the man in charge of the gong was Bob Danvers-Walker who had a double barreled name in the days before they were fashionable. I believe he did voice overs for the legendary Pathe News.
Suddenly children in school and office workers were all playing the 60 minute yes/no interlude. It was probably the pre-cursor of Mallett's mallet (more of which later) but slightly less violent. Successful yes/no contestants returned in the second half of the show to play the actual quiz. To call it a quiz is probably a misnomer. There were only three questions to answer and I seem to remember they weren't MENSA standard. Get them wrong and off you go without so much as a gong. Get them right and you had the chance to open one of the 10 boxes.
So a box was chosen and then Miles would try to offer to buy them back with various amounts of cash. The boxes contained either one of three booby prizes, six other prizes (which I believe were shown at the beginning of the programme) or a star prize. I still remember the vicious laughs of the audience when a box was opened to reveal a stick of celery or some other equally useless prize. Also the joy on the contestant's faces when Miles uttered those immortal words "You have won tonight's star prize". The whole show was given a touch of class by the smooth voice overs from Bob Danvers-Walker. One wag on being subjected to some quite strong pressure from Miles to "Take the Money" replied with something like "I wouldn't take the money even if you offered £200 (a large sum of money in those days)." to which Miles offered £200 and the contestant immediately replied "I'll take the money." Ha ha ever been had?
In addition the audience was roped in to holler either "Take the Money" or "Open the Box". If you are really lucky you can still hear these shouts today. They turned the show into more of a gladiatorial fight. There was also the added excitement of Box 13. Each week one box was linked with Box 13. If this box was picked by the contestant their options were increased to "taking the money," "opening their original box which could contain anything from a major to a booby prize" or "opening Box 13" (which spookily could contain anything from a major to a booby prize)!
Sadly Michael Miles died at the early age of 52. There were rumours of alcohol abuse, but in reality he suffered from epilepsy. He appears to have been a much nicer character in real life than Hughie Green who regularly referred to him as "my dad."
Take Your Pick does have the distinction of being the first British television quiz show to offer money as prizes.
Now I feel a change of genre coming on as we turn to two western series.
Wagon Train and Rawhide (with apologies for talking about theme music again).
I have three memories of Rawhide. 1/ It seemed to be on television all the time 2/ It featured Clint Eastwood and 3/ It had a signature tune by Frankie Laine that somebody bought for me on a 78 and the words were something like: Rollin rollin/Keep them doggies rollen/Rawhide. Never could understand where the dogs came into the equation. Anyway I have since found that the above lyrics weren't quite spot on but there's too little time to bother about that at the moment.
Rawhide ran from 1959 to 1966 and surrounds the movement of cattle from Missouri to Texas (I know this as I looked it up on the internet). Of course as I was only seven years old at the time I had no idea about the geographic sensibilities or the distances involved or the point of it all. No I was more impressed with the old can that Clint Eastwood used to drink out of (or am I getting mixed up with Wagon Train already?).
Apparently only about 200 head of cattle were used in the filming to represent the herd of 3,000. They must have run around a bit in order to look like a real crowd. I can't remember a single storyline but what the heck. I do know that Eastwood played the part of Rowdy Yates. Couldn't understand that first name as I thought it meant he was rather incontrollable - probably had a brother called Rowdy Behaviour.
At the end of each episode the boss used the immortal words "Move em on/Head em out" which was probably the signal for my mother to make a cup of tea!
Wagon Train seemed much more ridiculous. At least I could see some point in driving cattle along even if I did think the drovers were employed to take them for a run to tire them out before bedtime. But Wagon Train - well that was another kettle of fish altogether. It ran from 1957 until 1965. It starred Ward Bond long before he began making tea bags. He was the trail boss until he messed things up by dying in 1960 and having to be replaced - American series had a habit of just replacing people with no explanation whatsoever. They just changed looks, height, weight etc and we carried on watching.
To me the old train just used to ride around a bit (on horseback of course) and then stop and get surrounded by Indians, kill most of them and then move on and ride around a bit (on horseback of course) and then stop and get surrounded by Indians, kill most of them and then move on and ride around (you probably get the idea by now). So swiftly side-stepping Wagon Train it's time to move on to some comedy which will appear in part two.