Happy Birthday Brian Cant

I thought today was Brian Cant's 80th Birthday.  It's not.  This is one of the problems with Twitter.  Someone retweets something and those retweets keep going over days, weeks or months and then you think something has just happened that happened a long time ago.  His birthday was the 12th of July and just before his birthday his son tweeted that he would like people to remember his father with the hashtag #briancant80 and to consider donating to a Parkinsons charity.  I don't follow Brian Cant's son on Twitter, so I saw it yesterday.

Brian Cant is an important person for those of my generation.  We were the first TV children. Before us, people didn't have TV's in their home and programmes weren't made for children. It probably seems incomprehensible that we had an hour of TV at lunchtime; Mary Mungo and Midge, The Woodentops or Pipkins and some TV after school that ended with Zebedee saying, "Time for Bed."  Brian wasn't the fun, exciting, brightly coloured dungaree-clad presenter of Children's TV we have now.  He looked like everyone's Dad.

He is most famous for  Play School, which was a programme that taught us all about round window, square windows and arched windows.  Humpty and Jemima helped us count, tell the time and we sang nursery rhymes and songs along with Brian and his easy voice.  

Jackanory was always one of my favourite programmes and I'm sure it was partly responsible for my love of books. There were no flashy gimmicks, just someone with a fantastic voice and an ability to bring a story to life.  I remember Bernard Cribbens, Miram Margolyes, Kenneth Williams and Brian Cant. They showed you that it was a real book which meant you could get the book from the library and read it yourself and guess what? It was the same, you read with the expression of an actor!

But my favourite TV shows were Trumpton and Camberwick Green.  There can't be an adult my age that can't recite, "Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub."  These programmes were my first introduction to musicals.  Now, don't laugh.  Each character had a song, sung by Brian Cant. 

PC McGary No 452

 In fact Brian did all the voices.  The music was brilliant too, the opening title music of Trumpton with the clock was such a brilliantly clear example of pulse and counting that no child could fail to feel a beat (as they do now).  

Trumpton Opening Titles

Camberwick Green had a music box, with a beautiful example of three beats in the bar.  If only children heard music with three beats in the bar nowdays.

Camberwick Green Opening Titiles

The Fireman sliding down the pole were accompanied by music of descending pitch.

The Trumpton Fire Brigade

And these programmes were also full of humour.  The names of the characters were genius; Chippy Minton, the Carpenter; Windy Miller, the man who lived in the Windmill, Mr Dagenham, the salesman, Mrs Lovelace the hatmaker, with her 3 Peeks. Daphne, Mitzi and Lulu and Mr Troop, the Town Clerk.  Artists would appear just when they needed them to paint a picture of the Town Hall for the Mayor's Birthday and Windy Miller would get drunk on Cider and fall asleep outside of his windmill.

Windy Miller and the Cider

Watching these links to You Tube has been so much fun and has taken me right back to being a small child.  Happy Days.  So, Happy Birthday Brian Cant - even if I did miss it by nearly a month!