Monthly Archives: June 2020

Tiswas

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Tiswas is a British children’s television show which aired on Saturday mornings from 1974 to 1982. “Tiswas” stands for “Today Is Saturday: Watch And Smile. Presenters included Chris Tarrant, Sally James, Lenny Henry, John Gorman, and others – including returning special guests and famous personalities. One of the most popular characters was the masked Phantom Flan Flinger – the arch villain of the show who would think nothing twice of chucking a custard pie in your face.

The show was all about fun, mayhem, riotous and slapstick humour, jokes, custard pies, puppets, impersonations, music, and famous faces. Popular slots included ‘Flanorama’, ‘Compost Corner’, and ‘Flan Your Folks’. The show spawned a hit single called ‘The Bucket of Water Song’, performed by members of the cast as ‘The Four Bucketeers’.

My Saturday morning TV childhood memories are full to bursting with excellent programmes, but Tiswas will always have a special place for its sheer mayhem and fun.

Recently I received a little bit of Tiswas in my life again – namely an armful of 1981 issues of the Tiswas Family Fun Book (later Tiswas Magazine). Flantastic! Here are the covers, ads, and selected content – all wiped clean of custard pies, and dried out from their buckets of water soaking.

Enjoy! I’m off to practice my Dying Fly movements 🙂

Tiswas Family Fun Book Vol 1 N°9 1981.

Tiswas Book of Silly Superstitions 1981.

Tiswas official money box and digital watch. 1981.

Tiswas. Bob Carolgees and Spit the Dog.

Thank you for flinging flans with us 🙂

Speed – the weekly comic for boys, 1980

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The final issue of Speed before its merger with Tiger. 25th October. 1980.

Speed was launched on 23rd February 1980, edited by David Hunt, and published each Monday by IPC magazines. Aimed at boys, the comic featured strips about sports, daredevils, racers, and included articles and profiles on high performance vehicles of land, sea, and in the air.

Some of Speed’s regular comic strip characters. 1980.

F-15 A Eagle. Speed 20th September. 1980.

USS John F. Kennedy. Art: John Cooper. Speed 27th September. 1980.

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Selected images: Starlog Scrapbook movie magazine, 1984

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Featuring stars from some of 20th century cinema’s biggest sci-fi, horror, and fantasy hits (and a few misses) … TVTA is pleased to present selected images from the 1984 Starlog Scrapbook Vol. 3. by Norman Jacobs and Kerry O’Quinn.

© O’Quinn Studios Inc. Images reproduced by TVTA for film appreciation purposes.

Sigourney Weaver and Jones – Alien. JoBeth Williams – Endangered Species.

The Three Stooges. Have Rocket, Will Travel.

Abbott and Costello Go to Mars.

Edmond O’Brien and Jan Sterling. 1984.

David Naughton. An American Werewolf in London.

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Six Sentence Stories: A Love Like Iron

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Art Window, Paris. Photo: TVTA.

I’m linking up with Denise at Girlie On The Edge Blog, where she hosts Six Sentence Stories, and everyone is invited to write a story or poem constructed of six sentences based on a cue word given.

This week’s cue word is Iron.

 

 

Editor’s note: the following is an extract from a larger work in progress, a ghost story, and features two characters making a circular journey. I chose this extract for the Six Sentence Story as it mentions the word ‘iron’ many times, and seemed the perfect fit.

A love like iron

Henry felt the impatient pull of the maze, a magnetism drawing them to the window, reducing them to ferromagnetic powders sent scurrying to the vibrating point of an impossible attraction in an impossible place.

Marling took his arm and led him along, shoulder to shoulder, their cheeks so close they might have easily turned their faces and kissed as two lovers.

And they walked like this for moments in silence, pulled towards the maze, the midday sun finding the iridescence of Marling’s feathers which poked from her crown; medicine woman, animal power.

And the sun’s rays did also cast luminosity upon Henry’s new silk eye patch; pirate-bold, buccaneer.

When finally they arrived at the centre of the maze, the window had already been flung open by their enemy; the relentless pursuer who was waiting for them on the other side.

They entered the world of iron butterflies, iron maidens, iron ladies, iron men, iron giants, iron fists, iron skies and iron ages of a paradise wrought to a refinement good enough for the Eiffel Tower and Paris balconies, where once they haunted these structures as ghosts – flitting through the fretworks without a care in the world, and yet to be burdened by a guilt forged in iron upon their bare shoulders.

Love locks, Paris. Photo: TVTA.

The Eiffel Tower, Paris. Photo: TVTA.

 

The Doctor Who Quiz Book of Dinosaurs, 1982

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Cover illustration by Geoff Hunt.

We promised you dinosaurs! And here are some – with added Doctor Who time travel stamp of approval!

Presenting, the Doctor Who Quiz Book of Dinosaurs, written by Michael Holt, published by Magnet Books, 1982.

This paperback was aimed at children, and took readers on a journey with the 5th Doctor and his companions – Nyssa and Tegan, as they travelled back and forth through time exploring prehistory. The reader is asked to solve puzzles and answer questions after each adventure is told, aided with black and white illustrations by Rowan Barnes-Murphy.

Big bad bird…

According to the Doctor, the terrifying creature pictured below is a kind of hybrid lizard-vulture-woodpecker called Archaeopteryx (say it ‘Arky-op-terricks).

It couldn’t yet fly, and instead ‘glided’ down from the tops of trees to capture its ground prey, whereupon it would “tear him to shreds with its razor-sharp toothed bill.” The creature was too heavy for flight due to having weak wing muscles and solid, heavy bones – as opposed to modern birds who have hollow bones. Its feathers were used as insulation to protect against the cold climate it inhabited.

TVTA theory: Dinosaurs became extinct not because of an asteroid or disease, but because the Archaeopteryx friggin’ ate them all!

Artisit impression of Archaeopteryx. Image: SPL/BBC.

Koringa, the crocodile-wrestling circus lady! 

In the book, according to Nyssa she once saw a video of a lady croc-wrestler called Koringa, who worked with Bertram Mills’ Circus. The Doctor disputes that Koringa wrestled with crocodiles as they are far too deadly, and rather that it was alligators she wrestled. There follows the theory on how Koringa managed to wrestle such a beast, then a quiz about the differences between alligators and crocodiles. Regarding Koringa, I checked – and she really existed; so Nyssa was right.

Rear cover:

Doctor Who bonus book advert:

Doctor Who Best Sellers. 1984.

That’s all for now…

Thank you for avoiding Archaeopteryx with us 🙂 

The Pandemic and I (12) – movie masks, coffee, #BLM, Avaaz, and a very cool cat!

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Don Post Dick Tracy and Gremlins 2 masks. 1990. US.

Greetings, vintage mates… a quick post at the end of my week off work before I return this weekend.

In my last post I wrote that during the French period of déconfinement I wanted to:

  • enjoy a week off, after leave restrictions were finally lifted at my work. Check ✅
  • enjoy a real coffee on an outdoor terrace. Check ✅
  • order material for my blog, now the postal service is back to business. Check ✅

Today’s post features some new mask additions to my print advert collection.

Nice to get some new stuff in at last 🙂

Don Post Gremlins masks. Starlog. 1984.

Don Post TMNT Raphael mask. Starlog. 1990.

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Six Sentence Stories: Alice in Wonderland performed by the Fruit Ensemble of Pearsida

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Agathe Tran Quang My and Biosca art for Anne Sylvestre – Fabulettes 1969.

I’m linking up with Denise at Girlie On The Edge Blog, where she hosts Six Sentence Stories, and everyone is invited to write a story or poem constructed of six sentences based on a cue word given.

This week’s cue word is Passion.

 

 

Alice in Wonderland performed by the Fruit Ensemble of Pearsida 

Once upon a time in a world far beyond our stars, there was a beautiful garden in the Kingdom of Pearsida, inhabited by fruit who lived peacefully together in paradise.

One day, Princess Passion Fruit declared there would be a performance of Alice in Wonderland, and so she built a grand stage in the garden, and from behind the velvet curtains she directed her cast of thespian fruit.

The fine cast included: Alicia Apple in the lead role of Alice (a part she believed she was born to play); the renowned method actor Bartholomew Cavendish Banana as White Rabbit; Spike Rambutan as Cheshire Cat; Marilyn-Mae Mango as March Hare; Bitter Lemon as the Queen of Hearts; and country and western singing star Pow-Pow Pineapples as Mad Hatter.

After many hours of rehearsals the opening night came, and in the audience sat two strangers, travellers from another world – a man and a woman – who watched in silence… goodness, what strange fruit they seemed, everyone thought!

At the end of the play, the strangers left without word, and it was observed by Princess Passion Fruit that her lead actress Alicia was missing, and she cried out to the other fruit: “But where is Alicia Apple, our star?”

“Twas those two strangers in demand of an apple…” said Spike Rambutan, “who snatched poor Alicia and gobbled her up, alas, and there was nought I could do as my prosthetic tail was caught in a dry ice machine, and I fear it is the last we shall ever see of our starlet… may she rest in peace in the great garden in the sky!”