Child Of The 1980’s

Knight Rider did it for cars, Airwolf did it for helicopters, and it was Street Hawk that did it for motorbikes. In the 1980’s we loved our shows about technologically advanced forms of transport, and the short lived Street Hawk was no exception.

It aired in 1985 and whilst it only managed to make it to 13 episodes it still holds a place in my heart. Amazingly, despite such a small episode count there were no less than four different versions of the bike made for the show, but the common specifications were that it could travel very fast (200mph, or 300mph with the computer assisted Hyperthrust mode) and that it featured weaponry such as lasers, missiles and machine guns.

The funniest feature was the anti-theft device though. Obviously KITT and Airwolf both had doors that could be locked, but a motorbike doesn’t have that luxury. Instead it had an ejector seat which was triggered if someone other than the designated driver tried to mount it. Authorisation to ride was provided via what essentially amounts to a bum imprint detection system! The rider had to have a special suit made which was moulded to their body shape - the mould being created by having them stand in a glass cylinder that filled up with foam!

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A particularly popular style of US TV show in the 1980’s were the “big black high-tech vehicle” shows. Initially popularised by Knight Rider, the largest form of transport to follow this pattern was the helicopter, represented by Airwolf.

Airwolf was an experimental helicopter built by a company called The F.I.R.M, who were actually a branch of the CIA. The aircraft was heavily armed and capable of flying at supersonic speeds (its maximum speed was MACH 2 apparently, twice the speed of sound, and theoretically impossible for a helicopter to achieve). It was also endowed with some stealth capabilities, such as near silent running

The story of Airwolf starts to unfold when it is stolen back by its creator. The F.I.R.M, represented by a man codenamed Archangel, turn to Stringfellow Hawke (Jan-Michael Vincent), a now retired test pilot who was originally involved in the testing of Airwolf, to try and get the helicopter back. Hawke is content to live in his remote lakeside home, playing his cello, but agrees to help in exchange for The F.I.R.M tracking down his brother Saint John, who has been missing in action since Vietnam.

Stringfellow and his older friend Dominic Santini (Ernest Borgnine) manage to track down and recover Airwolf, or “The Lady” as the helicopter was sometimes referred to, but since The F.I.R.M have not managed to find Stringfellow’s brother he decides to keep Airwolf himself, hiding it away in the crater of a dormant volcano. The F.I.R.M aren’t happy about this, but come to an agreement with Stringfellow whereby they get him to run missions for them in Airwolf in return for a guarantee of protection from other agencies who also want to get their hands on the helicopter.

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Quite literally bouncing onto our screens during the late 1970’s and early 1980’s came Keith Chegwin, or Cheggers as he was nick-named, with his own pop music related quiz show for kids, Cheggers Plays Pop. The ever cheerful Cheggers would take two teams of school children through a number of challenges and quiz rounds set around the world of popular music.

Introduced by some fairly heavy music, with full on rock guitar and drums, the show was a barrel of fun from start to finish. The two teams were supported by the rest of their school, who sat behind them in rows all wearing the same coloured T-shirts, either red or yellow depending on the colour assigned to each school.

The question rounds were fairly standard fare. Each team was asked questions and scored points for getting them right. If the team didn’t know the answer, I think the other team got a chance to answer it. Pretty normal really. What made Cheggers Plays Pop so brilliant was the more physical games the kids had to play. Most were based around the idea of a relay race, with each child in the team having their turn, but this was spiced up by making them do mini assault courses. Cheggers would gleefully tell the kids what they had to do, normally demonstrating it at the same time. A typical challenge might be something like this:

So, first you’ve got to run round this pole three times, then try and walk across this beam without falling off. Jump up onto the inflatable, over the wall and then into the pool of foam. Dig out a ring, then return back over the inflatable, across the beam and put the ring on the pole before tagging the next person.

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In 1987 Sylvester McCoy (real name Percy James Patrick Kent-Smith) took over from Colin Baker as the seventh incarnation of Timelord Doctor Who. Sylvester first came to the public eye as part of the comedy act “The Ken Campbell Roadshow”, where he played the part of a stuntman called Sylveste McCoy (note the lack of an R in the first name), putting nails up his nose and ferrets down his trousers, among other things (perhaps playing the spoons - this was a favourite mannerism of his Doctor). A reviewer of the show believed that Sylveste McCoy was the actors real name, which prompt Percy to adopt it as his stage name. Later, when he realised that Sylveste McCoy contained 13 letters, and believing this to be unlucky, the R was added to become Sylvester.

Sylvester’s career took him through childrens TV, via Vision On (with Tony Hart), Tiswas and Jigsaw with Janet Ellis before landing the role of Doctor Who. Given the show was finally axed by the BBC in 1989 he was officially the Timelord for only two years, however he is credited as having the role until 1996, since he appeared in another of the Doctor’s Children In Need charity specials in 1993 (called Dimension in Time) and also reprised the role in the much anticipated US pilot/film in 1996, resuming some continuity for the Doctor and handing over the reigns to Paul McGann.

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Colin Baker took over the role of the Doctor from Peter Davison in 1984, unusually midway through a series rather than at the end (the only other to date is when Patrick Troughton took over from William Hartnell). The regeneration occured at the end of The Caves of Androzani in a fairly quick manner with little warning, much to the surprise of the Doctor’s assistant at the time, Peri (pictured).

This Doctor was far more flamboyant and argumentative than most, with brightly coloured yellow trousers and a patchwork quilt coat more befitting of a clown. Personally I never much cared for this incarnation of the Doctor, finding him loud and rude, although the blame can’t be laid at Baker’s feet for this, being a product of the writers at the time. I therefore have few memories of any of the stories starring Colin Baker.

Interestingly, Colin Baker appeared in the show before he became the Doctor, in the Peter Davison story Arc of Infinity. In it he stuns the Doctor with a gun, leading to the joke that he got the part by force!

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With the new series of Doctor Who starting this weekend now seems a good time to reminisce about the Timelord as he was in the 1980’s. For many Tom Baker is often the most remembered incarnation of the Doctor, but given that he hung up his scarf and bag of jelly babies in 1981 after playing the character for seven years, I shall start with the fifth Doctor, Peter Davison, who incidentally also sang the theme tune to Button Moon with wife at the time Sandra Dickinson, fact fans!

Peter Davison’s was the youngest actor to play the role (he was only 29 when he started). The fifth Doctor had a bit of a shaky start, similar in fact to current Doctor David Tennant who was also not in tip top form for most of his debut story. The regeneration process didn’t quite work properly, and for the first few stories Davison’s Doctor was shaky on his feet, at one point needing to rest in a special coffin like box to aid his recuperation.

He swapped the long scarf for the garb of an Edwardian cricketer, with long cream coloured over coat, orange and yellow stripy trousers and a creamy coloured V-neck jumper. He did retain the distinctive embroidered question marks from Tom Baker on his shirt collar however.

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Before he went grey and started hanging out with Fern Britton on This Morning, Phillip Schofield was best known for hosting Children’s BBC from the legendary Broom Cupboard - otherwise known as the BBC1 continuity room, the place where the announcer sits when telling you what TV programme is on next. By sticking a camera in the room a mini studio was formed from which Phillip and the other Children’s BBC presenters that followed him could introduce the days kids TV shows.

The first broadcast from the Broom Cupboard came on September 9th 1985, and was an immediate success. Not only was Mr. Schofield introducing the programmes he was also responsible for pressing all the buttons and twiddling all the sliders to start the programmes running as well as fading his own image and voice up onto our screens. The whole affair was perhaps a little rough around the edges, but this was part of its appeal and what kept us watching. In fact, one such mistake almost cost Schofield the job, when he mistakenly brought up the BBC1 globe instead of himself, then lost sound when he did return to the screen. He was apparently only saved the chop because the then Head of Presentation found it the most amusing thing he had ever seen.

The fun continued by involving the watching kids too. Viewers could send in their pictures which were pinned to the back wall of the Broom Cupboard, and they could also request word sheets for the theme tunes for some of the popular cartoon shows, which Phil would sing along with live on air - The Mysterious Cities of Gold and Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds spring to mind as good examples of this.

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Those good ol’ boys The Dukes of Hazzard burst onto our TV screens in 1979, and kept the police department of Hazzard County busy for 7 seasons, ending in 1985. The Dukes part of the title referred in the most part to the two lead characters, Beauregard Duke and his cousin Lucas Duke, which was a bit of a mouthful so they were known as Bo and Luke instead. They lived on a run down farm owned by their Uncle Jesse, and also yet another cousin, the pretty young Daisy Duke. With all these cousins it must have been a pretty big family, especially considering that Bo and Luke left for one series due to contract issues, and were replaced by two further cousins, Coy and Vance, the story being that Bo and Luke had left Hazzard to go NASCAR racing!

Of course, probably the most famous thing about the programme was the General Lee, the Dodge Charger which the Duke boys drove around in. It’s horn played a snippet of the song Dixie, and it was painted an orangey red with the US Confederate flag on the roof, and the number 01 on the doors. The doors were welded shut and access to the car was only possible by holding on to the roof and leaping in feet first. For filming the series there were several General Lees, the main reason being that the jumps and other stunts that the Duke boys performed each work had a habit of trashing the cars somewhat.

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