Ben Remembers...

Challenge Failed! So I actually wrote this a year ago. When I set myself the target of being consistent with updating this blog. I promised that I would post a second Another Year Older post and I just haven’t. I am a complete disappointment to myself and can only expect sporadic updates to return at some stage in the future. Thanks for nothing Ben.

I am old enough, just, to remember when technology was a repairable commodity and not just a collection of cheap and easily replaceable items. Seeing as the TV plays such a big part in my childhood memories I should probably reflect on where those early TV sets came from, they weren’t ours but rented from Radio Rentals (and later Granada). In the modern world just about every bit of technology…

Discount Supermarket, 1967-2007 Kwik Save with its quirky spelling and cheap shelving was one of the first ‘discount’ supermarkets in the UK. It was cheap and cheerful but is remembered by me mainly for a few quirks with its stores when compared to other supermarkets of the era. These days when you think of discount supermarkets its Aldi and Lidl that have been leading the way for over a…

General Retailer, 1909 – 2009 Everybody (who is old enough) will remember Woolworths, or Woolies as it was better known. Originating in America, for some reason as a nation we took the shop to our hearts until the while thing went bankrupt about 15 years ago and it was very sad to see it go. As this is a blog concerning my memories I’ll jump right in to the Woolworth’s story at the point which…

Defunct Shops As October arrives the demise of Wilko has inspired me to write about some of the big names from the high street that have disappeared from my lifetime. This month I’m focusing on both the names and formats of shops that have been gone from towns for years and years and yet linger on in my memory. New posts will appear each Saturday.

Puppet from Rainbow, ITV, 1972 – 1992 The camp pink hippo from Rainbow. In a show without a main female character it was often left to George to fill that role, playing with dolls and so forth. He was the most sensitive of the three puppets living in the Rainbow house. George was the softer of the three Rainbow puppets. If Zippy was the brash naughty one the George was the complete opposite.…

Puppet from Rainbow, ITV, 1972 – 1992 The most memorable character to come out of Rainbow. Zippy was loud and brash with a zipper along his mouth. It can’t have taken too long to come up with the name. Rainbow set the ground rules for almost every show that would ever appear on CBeebies. Bright colours, a mix of human and puppet characters. Of those puppet characters some were recognisable…

Puppet from Rainbow, ITV, 1972 – 1992 Bungle was the big fluffy, man-size Teddy bear from Rainbow. He knew his own mind and wasn’t afraid to share his opinions but was often frustrated, particularly with Zippy. Of the Rainbow three, Bungle was probably the one that least qualifies as a puppet seeing as he was essentially just a man in a bear suit. If the three puppets from Rainbow were…

Children’s Programme, 1981 – 1991 This musical trio popped up to provide a musical interlude on the cult children’s show Rainbow and they became so popular they gained their own spin off show and were still appearing in pantomime a decade later. The trio had originally started as Rod, Matt and Jane – Matt being Matthew Corbet, later of Sooty fame. Matt was then replaced by Roger before Freddy…

Children’s Programme, ITV, 1972 – 1992 This was a classic children’s television show that formed a huge part of my own childhood. Aimed at preschoolers of which I was one when I used to watch, it was quite possibly the first TV show that I latched onto. In a way Rainbow set the standard for all future children’s shows in the UK. While it may not have been the first to do what it did, it was the…

Rainbow Climbing High It’s September and from this month, in a bid to get things going here I am focusing on one subject each month. So I’m kicking off by going right back to my preschool years with one of the first TV shows I remember watching – Rainbow. Although I’m fairly sure any preschooler today would be totally unenthusiastic if they were sat in front of Bungle, Zippy and George in a way…

When I started this blog I thought it would be a good idea to do a post close to my birthday every year to reflect on things. I never have until now… How I got to here Three years ago I started writing this blog. Then about six months later I stopped again before sporadically resuming things. I started just as we entered lockdown when time was plentiful and I had big plans, fill this blog with…

Gameshow, BBC 1, 1994 – 2003 Not to be confused with the programme Total Wipeout which involved vast levels of physical activity, this gameshow only required a modest amount of that as it was mainly a general knowledge trivia quiz. There were two eras for Wipeout, the original series hosted by Paul Daniels and aired in the evening on BBC 1 and the later daytime incarnation hosted by Bob…

Back in 2020 when I seemed to have a lot of time on my hands I started this blog, posting various memories from my life. A large number of them being TV shows as that is what my world largely revolved around when I was younger. As the world gradually got back to normal towards the end of 2020 my posting here came sporadic and essentially just another failed attempt at some sort of side hobby for…

Next time you’re at the supermarket and you hear the beep… think of the fun you could be having on Supermarket Sweep! – the famous closing words uttered by Dale Winton at the end of each daytime trolley dash. After a decade of working in supermarkets I think I can now say Supermarket Sweep may well have been fun but the real world of retail much less so. Still some bright spark came up with the…

Every so often I come back here to this neglected blog and write a few things down, sometimes publish and then forget about them but I always get nostalgic so I would like to attempt getting back into writing things for here again soon.