The Olden Days podcast
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The local newsagent must have got pretty tired of my friends and I going in every day after school and crushing all the crisp packets in our attempts to feel which ones had a Tazo inside.
I recall being particularly delighted to acquire the purple one with Sylvester on it. I think that was everyone's favourite and it was quite hard to find.
Still have the folder somewhere... don't remember how close I came to completing the collection!
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I did watch Fantastic Max (because I watched pretty much everything on CBBC) but I really can't remember a thing about it, apart from the titular space-travelling baby. (I thought he also had a toy dinosaur that came to life, but I seem to have been confusing it with Potsworth & Co.) The only specific thing that's stayed with me is one strange occasion when they accidentally broadcast the same episode twice in consecutive weeks!
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The only specific thing that's stayed with me is one strange occasion when they accidentally broadcast the same episode twice in consecutive weeks!
Oh my goodness, I remember that now and I was really annoyed! "Whip us up a flying carpet, FX!" Yeah, we've already seen that! I seem to remember Andi Peters being forced to apologise for the mistake.
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I loved Fantastic Max - I even had one of the annuals. (Probably still have - it may be in my parents' attic somewhere.)
Looking back now, I can see how clever some of the scripts were: the characters' names (A.B. Sitter, FX, XS...), the storylines which made sense, and the asides from some of the cast:
Magic: Gaa-goo!
Max: Magic says she's itchin' for some action too!
A.B.: All that in "gaa-goo"? What an economical language.
It's probably not as good as I remember it, but at the time I really liked the concepts, and I loved FX, and all the amazing things he could do with those odd protrusions on his head!
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I did watch The Crystal Maze from the start, when I was 6, and I have incredibly fond memories of doing so. That was back in the days when we only had one TV so we'd watch things together as a family (and make fun of the stupid contestants together, haha). The awesome closing theme was the last thing I'd hear before heading off to bed on Thursday evenings. Good times!
I can only really discuss the impressions it made on me as a kid, as I haven't seen that many episodes as an adult - I don't have an urge to rewatch the whole thing like I did with Knightmare, probably because it's less character-based, and of course I'll never be able to recreate that special experience of seeing it for the first time with my parents.
Richard O'Brien was a huge part of what made the show so enjoyable, so it just wasn't quite the same for me after he left. Ed was a perfectly competent host, but RO'B was The Crystal Maze - it would be like someone else replacing Treguard in the later series of Knightmare, you know? And it kind of felt like Ed was trying a bit too hard, without managing to bring the same warmth and charm to the role. If Rick was visibly fed up then I didn't notice at the time.
Similarly, Industrial was probably my favourite zone, so I was a bit gutted when they replaced it with Ocean, which I was never especially keen on. There was just something so atmospheric about Industrial, and I liked the game where they had to break into the house, and the metal detector, the spider's web, the murder mystery, and the one with the giant doorbell. (I could have sworn the terrifying bomb defusal game and the one with the giant plug were in that zone too, but the fansite says they were both in Futuristic. Hmm!)
I also bought the Crystal Maze gamebook by Dave Morris, having previously bought a couple of his Knightmare books. Ahh, school book fairs.
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If you find YourListen somewhat tiresome to use, you can now have an easier time listening to The Olden Days podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTwny-h6UXugIi6BvE1yXUlzoD3T0FM6B
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Hurrah - this is the first time since March that you've done a podcast about something I watched! Loved Maid Marian, it was definitely one of my favourite children's shows and one of those things you appreciate even more as an adult. I got the DVDs a few years ago but still haven't found the time to watch them all - I think I only got through Series 1 and 2 before life got in the way. Really must get round to that sometime...
I still have all my issues of Young Telegraph. Had forgotten there were Maid Marian comic strips in it!
A Game Called John was always one of the most memorable episodes for me, I found that hilarious as a kid. One of my lecturers at uni really reminded us of Snooker. Another memory associated with the show is a school lesson where they gave us one of the script books to read aloud in groups - I think it was the first episode, as I'm pretty sure I remember a tadpole being involved.
Looking forward to next month's The Mummy podcast, and the ones you mentioned for next year!
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We're really glad you're still listening, Annie!
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I haven't watched them in many years so I don't know if I would feel differently about them now, but The Mummy and The Mummy Returns were among my favourite films back in the late '90s / early '00s. I didn't like the look of the later films so I never saw them, and I had no idea there was a cartoon series!
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I haven't watched them in many years so I don't know if I would feel differently about them now, but The Mummy and The Mummy Returns were among my favourite films back in the late '90s / early '00s. I didn't like the look of the later films so I never saw them, and I had no idea there was a cartoon series!
I watched The Mummy just the other day. I was still amused. Brandon Frasier was great in it. It's certainly a lot better than the last Mummy from last year.
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Danger Mouse, Count Duckula and Victor & Hugo are all cartoons that I watched at the time, but the only thing I really remember about any of them is their title sequences (and closing credits in the case of Duckula) - nothing specific about the content of the episodes! When CITV did their Old Skool Weekend I was even startled by Duckula having an American accent, as I had zero memory of that... I guess I watched so many US cartoons that it didn't jump out as weird when I was a kid, and I may not have been aware that David Jason was the voice artist.
I was very young when Danger Mouse was on, so the whole thing pretty much went over my head, I think (especially since I've never been into the secret agent genre). I just remember the theme song with all the bombs and the fact they lived in a postbox.
Duckula is one of those things that I did watch but always felt a little uneasy about - I don't like vampire stuff so the creepy intro was quite off-putting! (For some reason I've retained a vivid memory of accompanying my parents on a shopping trip to choose some new kitchen tiles when I was about 6, during which the man in the store let me sit and watch a video so I wouldn't get bored. He gave me a choice between Duckula and The Herbs, the latter of which I wasn't familiar with, so I went with Duckula even though it wasn't a favourite of mine.) Incidentally I created a lot of "songs" in about 2001 using samples from TV themes and anything else I had on the computer, and one of them ended with "And once more I say to you: goodnight out there, whatever you are".
Victor & Hugo is one of the few things I ever watched on weekday CITV due to its being on before Knightmare. I remember finding it hilarious but I don't know why, because the only thing that sticks in my memory is the line "Hugo and Victor - that's what I think anyway!" (It's possible that I just found Hugo's voice quite funny.)
Don't know Avenger Penguins at all!
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Don't know Avenger Penguins at all!
Now that surprises me - I'd have thought you'd know about Avenger Penguins!
I remember it being on around the same time as Knightmare, and surviving past its demise. As far as I'm aware, it was an American-produced show, syndicated to CITV and lasting two series (possibly three, but I only remember two...!).
My main memories of the show aren't the titular penguins at all - there were three(?) of them, but I hardly remember any names - but the villains. The main antagonist was called Doom, and his assistant was called Slime (or possibly Slimy, Slimey, Slimer, or something else with the word "slime" in it). I loved that character, and the voice he had. He also had a lumbering gait with low-slung arms, which facilitated the time-honoured "walk this way" gag in one episode (which Doom humorously broke the fourth wall to comment upon).
I also remember Slime(y?) getting turned into a pedal bin at one occasion, and turning to the good side at the end of each series to help bring down Doom, only to reappear as part of the bad side at the start of the next series with no valid explanation as to why he made the switch back!
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Now that surprises me - I'd have thought you'd know about Avenger Penguins!
Doesn't ring any bells. It depends what sort of timeslot it had - I sometimes watched bits of the weekend morning shows on CITV (Ghost Train etc), and I think I occasionally saw some early-afternoon stuff that aired before the start of CBBC, but apart from that, I wasn't in the habit of flicking over.
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We are still releasing an episode of The Olden Days podcast every other month, exclusively on YouTube. This is the playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLTwny-h6UXugIi6BvE1yXUlzoD3T0FM6B
Our latest episode was on The Vicar of Dibley, the next one will be centred around century-bridging CITV staples Art Attack and How 2, and then in June we'll have one on Timebusters, which will undoubtedly mention Knightmare more than a little.
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The final episode of The Olden Days podcast was released a few weeks ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E42RgHUnOxw
After eighty regular episodes and fifteen specials over exactly ten years, we've finally called it a day with this one. It was great fun making The Olden Days podcast and there's a ton of really great chat in there covering all kinds of old movies and TV shows, which will all remain available to check out at any time.
I'd never have volunteered to edit the Temporal Discussion podcast without having become so superbly adept at editing The Olden Days, so you can thank The Olden Days for the fact that Temporal Discussion didn't fizzle out completely at some point last year... or at least that it isn't still stuck on Series 5 Episode 4, or something like that!
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