The Easter edition of Magpie from 1969,Susan is in the VTR room while Tony gives a demonstration of the first domestic Sony reel to reel video recorder.
Susan Stranks (ITV) and Toni Arthur (BBC) were my two all time favourite female kids TV presenters that I really adored as a child growing up in the 1970s. That really was a true golden age for TV for kids then - coupled with some great music too. In spite of the political climate, at least we had this brilliant escape from the humdrum and dreary real world...Sadly there has never been any such equivalent from the 1990s onwards. We were so lucky as youngsters then....no over reliance on technology and social media to poison and pollute and make our lives a misery...just good old three channels on TV, a lot of (in hindsight maybe kitsch) innocence, that sense of wonder each time your fave programme came on..... and some truly amazing music too! And yes, before people say we're shameless nostalgists: let us freely admit that the ONLY GOOD thing about having access to social media and RU-vid today is that at least we can actually revisit these archives that would otherwise be forgotten and long banished from view..... No denying how much I love RU-vid for allowing us this sort of privilege again :)
I will hold my hand up and say I remember the first episode of magpie on the new Thames Television, in 1968. Susan Stranks was standing on the lock at Teddington introducing the first episode. When the theme song to a children’s tv show is ten times better than anything you’ve heard in the charts recently
I used to fancy Susan so badly, she was by far the sexiest woman on television. Probably I speak for half the population of British youngsters of that lovely era, who couldn't tell their mum how much they fancied the woman on the telly.
We had one of those Sony VTR video recorders at our school in the early 1970s for playing school programmes . It only did black and white recordings , but at that time the school television monitor was black and white too , a big set in a wooden cabinet on a high wooden frame, made by Decca I think.
The best part is that fantastic theme tune with the graphics sung by the Spencer Davis Group. I wish I had seen it as Blue Peter was on different days. I was that kid from the late 60s and early 70s who grew up adoring tv.
It was by the Spencer Davis Group - under an assumed name! True fact! I only found out this later on too!! I initially thought it was somebody like Procol Harum as it sounded like them too....
God blimey we was easily impressed back in those days. Amazing to think that this gigantic behemoth was once cutting edge technology. You can now store shed loads of 1080p Mp4 movie files on a micro SD card the size of a fingernail then play them back on a solid state device the size of a pack of cards.
Used to watch Magpie often after coming home from work in the late 1960s.TV back then was limited to 3 channels, hour close down early afternoon and ending 11-12 at night. Some might say we had a better mix of entertainment, than the wall to wall 24 hour TV today. Susan Strank's was the quintessential English lady of the 1960s. She also appeared as a pupil in the 1964 film the 39 Steps, She married the late Robin Ray the TV actor and son of the old comedian Ted Ray.
