Hartley Hare and Pipkins - am I the oldest Mumsnetter in the world?

[toooldforthisshirt37]

There is another thread where a chaperone gave a child with SN a toy rat to keep them quiet. I read the thread and was appalled and yet comforted by the pictures of the rat. Didn't want to hijack that thread but it reminded me of Hartley Hare, who was a terrifyingly bad puppet in a kids show in my youth. The show was called Pipkins I think and included Topov the Monkey and a tortoise, whose name I can't remember.

Am I the oldest and/or most disturbed MNer? As, while Hartley terrified me he also brought joy to my heart because he was such a bad little shit! I think 70s kids TV may have been dominated by people on some sort of recreational substances to be fair.

We had a TV on wheels at primary school that the teachers had to lug around and put away. One night the TV was stolen, they think that they got in through the roof! security wasnt as tight as it is now in the 70s.
We had to wait weeks for a new TV to go on the wheels.

Yes 80's our school had one - i remember each week an episode of something called cloudburst! Think there may have been other ones but cant remember.

My big sister had a crush on that Robinson Crusoe . It was on a Saturday evening before Brownies and she'd be polishing her belt buckle in front of the TV.

When I was first teaching in the early 1990s, to give ourselves a break on a Friday, two colleagues and I would sit our kids down in front of the TV and my colleagues - being older - would decide what to watch. There was this bloody awful thing (Wordy?) that scared the bejabus out of me and I was 30! It looked ancient even then, and I'd never seen it as a kid so maybe it was on schools television when I was at high school. But our kids were enthralled by it, every Friday, last thing. We watched loads of really crap retro 'educational' TV, just because we couldn't be arsed to teach on a Friday afternoon.

We used to watch a series called Dark Towers at school in the mid 80s.

Thank you Trinity Belle that has just brought back lovely memories of being off school poorly watching school programmes on the settee at my Nana's house 😊

Wasn't Heinz Wolf in the Great Egg Race. Used to love that.

Earlier today, I remembered Peppermint Pig, about a family who adopted a pig. I think at the end the mother wanted to send it to the abattoir, but the girl didn't want it to.

I remember Cloudburst. Wasn't it a little dark?

paddle -Up (canoeing) and Motorbike programme - Kickstart?

Oh oh oh The Duchess of duke street is being rerun on Drama at the weekends!

I remember pipkins too. I liked it at the time but thinking back it was really pretty gross.

I have just seen a trailer for the remake of Porridge why oh why oh why ????

That remake of Porridge is an unfunny travesty.

Anyone remember 'Lizzie Dripping'? School girl befriends witch in a graveyard. Loved that!

I do. I don't remember a lot about it though, other than that there was a witch and Lizzie Dripping.

Heinz Wolf is a real person, a professor of something or other

Hartley Hare and Pipkins nope- I had a mortgage when that was on TV.

Great thread. I’m mid-40s. I absolutely loved Pipkins, Bagpuss (especially Prof Yaffle the Woodpecker and the little mice in the Mouseorgan), those squeaky little moon-dwelling Clangers, and Itsy and Bitsy.

Although I can see objectively now that he is a creepy old fucker, I was really fond of Hartley Hare as a child. Had a scraggly rabbit toy called Hartley. On the other hand, if you want truly terrifying, then, now, and always, I give you... NOSEYBONK! Anyone remember him?

Oh, I forgot Hoppity!
m.youtube.com/watch?v=kR6FQG0H9-I

Wasn't Heinz Wolf in the Great Egg Race. Used to love that.

Yep he was.

And here he is:- The Great Egg Race.

Tomorrow's World & The "OU" anyone?

Listen with Mother
Muffin the Mule
Flowerpot Men
Andy Pandy
Twizzle
Jiffy the Broomstick Man

We didn't have TV at all for years, hence Listen with Mother

Loved Kizzy and The Duchess of Duke Street.
I remember my mum letting me stay up late to watch the Edward VII drama that starred Annette Crosbie and Timothy West. Great stuff.

Petalflowers yes, I think Cloudburst was a little dark - I remember the ending being quite shocking (although I can’t remember now what happened) and that it was quite unlike anything else I’d ever watched. Will have to look it up!

Peppermint Pig is was an adaption of a book by Nina Bawden. Lizzie Dripping were books written by Helen Cresswell. I've read both to DD in recent years.

Kizzy scared me when they burn the grandmother's caravan at the start (if I've remembered that correctly).
Robinson Crusoe always seemed to be on during the school holidays.

It feels like the 70s/80s were a golden age for children's TV adaptations of books.

There was some cracking TV all round.
I watched OU programmes! And I remember some of Jacob Bronowski's Ascent of Man, the cave paintings amazed me. A few years later I remember loving the Connections series by James Burke which was an interwoven history of technologies.

Black sit with the kids and think what happened to BBC documentaries. I'll admit the cinematography can be brilliant now but the audience is assumed to be dimmer.

That should read " now I sit with the kids.."