Wimbledon weird

[Owt]

I’m talking about what used to be called ball boys but I’m not sure what you’d call them now? Ball kids? Ball catchers? Ball people? Does anyone remember the shoe people? It was a children’s tv show back when I was a kid, around the same time as raggy dolls. Children’s tv programs used to be on after school for an hour between 3:30 and 4pm. After that there would be the news and then home and away.
Why do the ball people act so robotic at Wimbledon? They seem to run as fast as they can and then come to a sudden stop and stand like soldiers, what is the purpose of this? I can’t take my eyes off them!

I believe they call them Ball Boys and Girls.
What's with the sudden children's TV memory in the middle of that?

Wimbledon still has ball boys and ball Girls.
They are smart and professional in order to do their job efficiently without disrupting play.

Bizarre reminiscence about childhood TV in the middle of that post?

I’d call them ball boys and ball girls like they’ve always been called. Ball children sounds too weird!

I loved the shoe people. The theme tune was 'shoe, shoe, shoe, shoe people. Shoepy, dooepy, dooepy, doo.' I am not sure what the significance of the Wimbledon ball catchers has to do with your post.

I think I was conditioned to dislike Wimbledon as a kid because children's TV was cancelled (or moved to bbc2 but shorter) when it was on.

I wasn’t allowed to watch BBC, we were ITV only. This was before the days of digital TV.

This is a very odd post.

We were the other way around: only allowed to watch BBC!

@Owt my friend’s dad wrote ‘The Shoe People’!

Ball boys and girls like they've always been called 🤷🏼‍♀️ they're not robotic but get the job done with the least interruption.

I wasn't allowed to watch ITV @Owt adverts were for common people 😂 still don't watch it now unless it's sport.

We were BBC. ITV was common. We lived in a terraced house in the North West. 🙄😂

@ThatLoudBear us too! Unless we went to Grandma and she would treat us to Corrie!

Presumably she wasn’t actually treating you though and just didn’t want to miss it herself!!

was blockbusters on at 6pm?

I think it was children’s tv 3:30-4:30
news 4:30 - 5pm
home and away 5pm - 5:30pm

maybe blockbusters was on at 5:30?

ITV was more regional then. Hope you had one of the better regions.

I can’t remember.

I had a crush on Adam and used to look forward to watching every night for reason. I think it was my first crush along side John travolta.

Robotic? I’d call it doing their job as fast as possible in as unobtrusive and non distracting way as possible. What do you want them to do-juggle?

Does anyone remember that children’s programme about how they selected and trained the kids to be ball boys / ball girls? The Lowdown?

If you were kicked out you got The Letter.