stephen-redburn

In those early days of TV, the BBC reserved the new Image Orthicon cameras for the adult shows in the evenings. The daytime children's shows used the old Iconoscopes, designed twenty years earlier in the mid 1930s. These overloaded when they saw white paper, so Adrian Hill always had to remind children to send in their drawings on grey paper. If they sent the pictures in on white paper, they could not be shown as the screen would go to white-out then looked as if it was covered in black oil and the camera man would have to cover the lens for a few seconds to let it settle down. For that reason the BBC's Designs Department had to test its video recording techniques in the evenings, so it had better quality images to work on.

I saw this at the Round-House in London at a big Film exhibition in about 1970 just after it was made. ( I recall the school took us up for the day.) I recall it was mildly funny but betrayed its origin as a children's book. Its attempts to portray a sort of tourist image of swinging London seemed rather anachronistic even at the time. I believe this was about the only time it was shown in public. It poked fun at the British Army Guards Regiments and rather improbably had Bumbo trying to convert the soldiers under his command to passivism and get them to lay down their arms while on parade. It was Joanna Lumley's début in the movie but as it was never shown it did little for her at the time. With the coming of DVDs it has now been released but I don't plan to buy it.