IF MY MEMORY SERVES ME TRUE…

By Jim Waterman

Throughout my life people have always said I have a great memory. Some evidence suggests they might have had a point, whether it concerned what I was supposed to be learning at school and far beyond, Formula One statistics, or useless bits of knowledge such as the Russian word for refrigerator (that’s холодильник, by the way). Old kids’ TV programmes that I watched as a nipper have always had a habit of sticking with me, which is why I was able to fill in bits and pieces of information about Treasures of the Mindlord for UKgameshows.com; it seems everyone bar me had forgotten about it. This show, made by TSW in 1986, was not far short of being a predecessor to Knightmare, and so after enjoying it during its brief run, it came as no surprise that I took to Knightmare like swords to a goblin right from day one.

I saw every episode of series one and two (bar one) when they were first broadcast, hence my memories of these two series were set in stone. Series three was rather rockier. In September 1989 I started at a new school, where the day ended at 5:40pm on a Friday, and although they say small kids operate VCR timers better than any adult, relying on my seven-year-old brother to record Knightmare wasn’t always a success. I saw some of series three, but by no means all of it.

As for the rest... it had been impressed on me by my parents and teachers over my first year at the new school, during which I was the grand old age of ten, that I was now swimming with the big fish. From this point onwards, entirely by my own decision, facts and facts only were what I would deal with; I equated facts with being mature, and imagination as anything but. Whatever did not fit with this self-imposed totalitarian regime of constant intelligence and maturity was brutally put to the sword – that vivid imagination that had been what I lived for during my first decade was well and truly trounced, and kids’ TV was always going to be one of the first casualties, although The Crystal Maze was still given the green light as it was on at 6:30pm on Channel 4 rather than 4:40pm on CITV. This made all the difference.

So there was no longer room for Knightmare in my New World Order. No longer did I bother asking my brother to record it, even though occasionally he would, and in all I saw snippets of series four, but no more. All I remembered from that series were the bits of forest, the eye shield sequences, the Corridor of Blades, the rounded skull ghosts - and in particular a scene involving two of them. As I later found out, this was in the final episode of the series, shown after the end of term.

Series five I saw probably one clip of, involving blue fire – unsurprisingly this also turned out to be the final episode; and I must have seen at least one scene of series six or seven, as I remembered the walking knight life force clock. But only just. Equally, a brief flash of the life force pie was my only original memory of series eight, which I definitely remember nothing else of from first time round.

Should I have put aside my newly-formed prejudices against kids’ TV which I had forcibly consigned to the scrap heap before I was old enough to be a contestant on Knightmare? My first week at Trinity Hall, Cambridge – in which I met a certain Ben Lowings, the caped crusader of series five – suggests Knightmare and being intelligent could quite easily have co-existed peacefully. But it was not to be at the time, and now I present the fallout from that unnecessarily difficult period - my “mistaken memories” – which, not entirely surprisingly, is centred on series four.

1) The amazing jumping skull ghost:

As I remembered it, as one of the dungeoneers was walking through a castle during an eye shield sequence, a skull ghost jumped out from the left side of the screen, made a loud bzzaarrrp noise - similar to what would accompany the destructors of series two, or the appearance of Ariadne - then disappeared back towards the side of the screen. During the Challenge repeats of series four and five I was always watching like a hawk, trying to spot this all-too-brief skull ghost sequence. The reality finally revealed itself in the penultimate episode of series five; shortly after what had been a flower seller’s stall earlier in the series, during an eye shield sequence a pooka jumped out from the right side of the screen, made a brief wailing noise identical to what accompanied the skull ghosts in that series, and disappeared back towards the side of the screen, to the sound of a gasp from Pickle.

2) A rather more difficult Corridor of Blades:

The Corridor of Blades was, I thought, one of my stronger memories from series four, but even that did not escape the notorious brain-clouding effects of time. As I remembered it, there would usually be three or four blade sequences, starting with a high one, a low one, a low one on the other side, maybe another high one, and then, just as they might be getting complacent... two at once, forcing the dungeoneer to move and duck as well. Presented in glorious Stick-o-vision:

Challenge to the rescue again! I watched right through series four to eight, and saw (no pun intended) every Corridor of Blades sequence. And at no point was there ever more than one blade at a time. I can think of only one reason why I ever had the impression that two blades approached at once, and it is Giles’s quest at the end of series four – in the same episode where I noticed the two skull ghosts crossing the entrance to the corridor, and in which Giles ducked down very low to avoid the high blades. It seems this final episode of series four is where most of my memories of that series, both true and false (false and true... I’ll stop now), were forged.

3) The mark two and three life force clocks:

I saw so little of the later series first time round, it’s a wonder I remember any of it at all, let alone a scene involving the second life force clock, especially as it appeared so rarely and had so little bearing on the quest by this time. From those severely hazy memories I remember it as being a two-stage clock like the old one, in that first the armour would fall off, leaving a clothed but unarmoured knight underneath, then the flesh would fall off, taking pieces of clothes with it, à la condition amber. The reality, as we all know, was very different - the skeleton was directly underneath the armour. This has led me to a further mistaken impression about this life force clock, but that is a lengthier story for another article!

Common opinion around long-time Knightmare fans is that the less said about series eight’s pie, the better. But that too remains responsible for a mistaken memory – namely, that the disappearance of each section of the pie as the clock ran out was accompanied by a noticeable chomping noise. This time I am genuinely stumped as to where this memory came from, as the only sound associated with the third life force clock is a high-pitched ping as it returns to a whole pie. If my memory isn’t playing further tricks on me now, you have to go right the way back to series four and an unfortunate end to a quest in Ariadne’s lair to find any chomping noises at all... (I’ve checked the memorable scene in series five where the blocker eats Chris, and there’s a gulp, but nothing else!)

4) Wall Monsters:

I have one more very minor mistaken memory: before discovering the Knightmare website (well before seeing any of the Challenge repeats) I thought Olgarth and Granitas were the series one and two wall monsters and were joined by Igneous for series 3. I’d completely missed Golgarach and Brangwen the first time round and it was quite a surprise to see that they’d taken over.