You know what they say. Even nostalgia ain’t what it used to be. But when does nostalgia start?
It’s been a week where The Times has been including tokens to collect DVDs of children’s television. Mr Benn. The Flumps. Even the Wombles. But what have they called it? Nostalgia children’s TV.
Is this a sign that I am getting older, or that nostalgia is getting younger? Not so long ago, programmes like these had their own special place on Cult TV, a separate section of the main BBC site.
Call them cult, call them classic, even call it retro. But nostalgia to me suggests a bit more of a pipe and slippers approach. And while I have regaled you with the joys of cardigans, I don’t feel that children’s TV of the 70s, which in many cases is still being replayed every so often, is in the nostalgia department.
Nostalgia is the underpinning of novelty radios in inserts for the weekend papers. It’s adverts for products that weren’t that attractive in 1940, and are now more amusing for what they suggest about the period.
I wouldn’t want to suggest that all 70s TV (or indeed 80s, as “Willo the Wisp” is part of the collection) is tremendous. You may also note they are not selling us Bagpuss, or the Clangers, the ‘big guns’ of that era – spin offs and linked products for that time are clearly already well looked after in the marketing department.
Myself, I’m hoping for some ‘Ivor the Engine‘. I think it’s time to reacquaint the viewing public with a dragon that slept on the coals of the train. You could even call it part of the ongoing Welsh renaissance. I’m sure Russell T. Davis will come up with something.