WAC-a-Day

WAC-A-DAY
Made by: ?
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1985-91

Theme tune: “It’s WAC-a-Day, no school today, so what ya going to do?/Forget your chores, throw on some clothes (?), here’s what we’ve got for you/Oh, WAC-a-Day/What’s that?/Wait and see who’s on/Join now, stay tuned/Okay, let’s go!/It’s WAC-a-Day!”

WAC stood for Wide Awake Club, of which this show was a daytime spin-off, geared at lethargic children in their pyjamas, bored out of their brains in the school holidays. It was presented by none other than Timmy Mallett, along with his cockatoo, Magic, who always looked as though the whole thing was too much for him, and that he might drop off his perch at any moment. Timmy should need no introduction: he was an ageless maniac who was born to present children’s TV, and he personified the word ‘wacky’. He had a vast collection of ridiculous pairs of specs, he usually wore those luminous Bermuda shorts made fashionable by the mid eighties, and he often wore two baseball caps at the same time (twin peaks - it was a joke, see?) There would be cartoons like Go-Bots and Galaxy High School, countless rounds of Mallett’s Mallet (“It’s-a-word-assocation-game-where-you-mustn’t-pause-and-you-mustn’t-hesitate-repeat-a-word-or-say-a-word-I-don’t-like-or-you’ll-get-a-bash-on-the-head-like-this-or-like-this-look-at-each-other-and-go-bleeurgh-look-at-the-audience-at-home-and-go-bleeurgh”) where the loser got a sticking plaster to place on any part of the anatomy and wave to the folks at home with, and there was even an expedition to Kenya, where Timmy taught us all to say ‘Jambo’, and painted a lot of actually very good landscapes.

Because it was the school hols, there was a Holiday Postcards slot, and there were other ‘features’ like Wactors and Wactresses, The Manic Minute, and the WAC-saw Puzzle. Fingers In Your Ears Time gave kids the opportunity to show off their usually-limited singing talents, and Drop Your Toast was an attempt to make some unsuspecting child do exactly that by mentioning them live on national television.

Yes, Timmy Mallett was an assault on the senses in all possible ways, and you couldn’t help feeling sorry that he couldn’t get a real job where he didn’t have to leap about the place like a child with Attention Deficiency Disorder - but the fact is that there is absolutely no substitute for him. Since he retired to Timmy Towers, nobody on children’s television has matched him for sheer enthusiasm and passion for entertaining. Mind you, enough is enough.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 7/10

Ulysses 31

ULYSSES 31
Made by: BRB International
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: 1981, plus repeats

This is one of those weird cartoons that most people don’t talk about, because they can’t be sure that they didn’t imagine the whole thing. Ulysses 31 was set in the 31st century, and was loosely based on The Odyssey. Ulysses himself was a Barry Gibb look-alike (but ginger), who was orbiting the planet Troy with his son, Telemachus, and had to return to Earth before his wife, Penelope, married someone else. But Telemachus was kidnapped by worshippers of the Cyclops, and when Ulysses attacked and destroyed them, the gods were angered, and cast Ulysses’ ship into the far reaches of space, deleting the databanks on board, so he became utterly lost. The gods also put his crew in a permanent state of suspended animation; they were in a coma, and hung lifelessly in mid air on the ship. When Ulysses rescued Telemachus, he also saved an alien girl called Yumi, and her brother, Numinar, but Numinar is also placed under the coma curse, and his sister can only visit him and hope that he will recover. So the series was basically the long saga of Ulysses trying to find Hades in order to release his cursed crew members, and there was also a little red robot, No-No (short for ‘no, no, please don’t put the robot in the series’), belonging to Telemachus, who had helped saved his master, but was mainly there as the court jester. Ulysses 31 was a giant among kids’ cartoons, and it certainly had me gripped when I was six; I was intrigued and fearful of the comatosed ship’s crew, and used to have nightmares about it happening to me. It was one of those odd cartoons that could never have originated from the UK, and indeed didn’t, but life after school was richer because of it - and little did we know, we were actually watching an interpretation of classical mythology out of school hours.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 9/10

(Thanks to www.alvarezperea.com for the borrowed pic)

Trumpton

TRUMPTON
Made by: Gordon Murray Puppets
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1967, plus endless repeats

The second of the Camberwick Green trilogy saw the villagers moving to the nearby town of Trumpton, obviously eager for the bright lights. Still narrated by Brian Cant, and with all the old characters present, there was also Miss Lovelace and her dogs; Bill Stickanick, the billboard-pasting man; the Mayor; the town clerk Mr Troop; Mrs Cabbit and Mr Platt, and the most famous team of fire-fighters on TV, led by Captain Flack - they were, of course, Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb. Pugh and Pugh were identical twin brothers, by the way. Each episode would briefly focus on the town hall clock, which kept the time for Trumpton, and they would end with the fire brigade band holding a concert in the park. Bet they wished they’d stayed in Camberwick Green. Gordon Murray went to a fair bit of expense with these series, because although television was still in black and white when he started, he shot them in colour, with a mind to the future. In fact, when he finished work on Chigley, his final series of this ilk, he burned all the characters and sets so that no-one could re-use them, meaning that only his original Technicolor repeats could be shown. Cunning.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

(Thanks to www.telegoons.org for the borrowed pic)