Things that freaked me out when I was a kid

Evil Edna

Willo the Wisp: Five minutes of pure hell to wrap up your day, just before dinner. Lovely.

Not an easy thing to bare – the jump from the sausage on fork silliness of Grange Hill to the dark world of Willo the Wisp with all characters voiced by Kenneth Williams, not generally known for his massively child friendly tone.

The characters included (courtesy of Wikipedia):

Willo the Wisp, the narrator. A blue floating ghost-like creature, Willo had a long pointed nose which caricatured that of Williams

Arthur the caterpillar (as a gruff cockney).
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Mavis Cruet, a plump clumsy fairy with erratic magical powers.

Carwash, a snooty bespectacled cat with a character based on Noel Coward.

The Moog, a supposed “dog” who is unable to think for himself.

Twit, a small bird.

The Beast, who began life as a dim prince, who can’t pronounce the letter r correctly, before an unfortunate encounter with Edna ended up with his transformation into a hairy shambling creature. In this encounter, he crashed into Edna on his bicycle and called her, “Very dangerous. And what a wotten progwamme.” Edna replied, “I’ll ‘wotten-progwamme’ him!” and transformed him into The Beast.

Other recurring characters included:

Gnomes, one of them of whom Mavis takes a liking to.

The Astrognats, explorers of space with a mushroom-shaped rocket.

The Bookworm, a very clever, intelligent worm who eats facts from books as a source of knowledge.

A regiment of toy soldiers.

A bat.

But none as memorable with the aforementioned EVIL EDNA, a witch in the form of a walking, talking television set who could zap people with her aerials. Scarily unsettling and disconcerting on so many levels.



No 73.





A Saturday morning programme for kids. Really?

According to Wikipedia:

‘This show would feature actors in character as hosts, performing their own comedic storyline around the usual guests, music videos, competitions and cartoons. Much of the show was improvised, and a whole week of rehearsals plus an extensive dress rehearsal on Friday preceded each live broadcast on Saturday morning’

Thanks then. As if getting our tiny heads around Sandi Toksvig wasn’t enough of a challenge. Still as least the cast enjoyed themselves even if none of us kids had a clue what was going on AND it kind of hurt our heads.

The video for Queen’s I want to break free



This video seemed to play over and over again on Top of the Pops as if to deliberately freak us out. (In fact it wasn’t a conspiracy against us, the song was in the charts for 15 long weeks.)

Most kids live in fear of the hoover – the sheer noise of the thing, the repeated bashing against your bedroom door that forced you out of bed every Saturday. But this one was operated by a strange man – dressed as a woman – with a moustache. WTF?

Lollipop people



Everyone knows that an integral part of every child’s life is having a Roses (or was it Kleenex?) advert style relationship with your Lollipop man or lady. They’re chubby and twinkly eyed, always interested in hearing about your school day, they make you laugh and give you tissues every now and again. You, in return give them a box of chocolates every Christmas.

Eh? Maybe in a parallel universe somewhere. In this one they tend to be miserable; fed up with the early mornings, freezing cold temperatures, a constant stream of kids trying to strike up conversations while crossing a busy road, rubbish pay and the crap chocolates occasionally thrusted at them, when they’re supposed to be on a diet.

Rabies



I’d always harboured a seemingly irrational fear of Rabies and remember having nightmares that the channel tunnel would leave me foaming at the mouth and scratching at car windows, for some reason. I did vaguely remember a rabies based TV series when I was younger but didn’t think it could be the reason. Then I found this on Wikipedia:

‘The Mad Death is a British television serial made by the BBC and transmitted in 1983.

The three-part series examined the effects of an outbreak of rabies in the United Kingdom and was noted for its occasionally chilling content. It has been described by at least one reference book as being one of the most bleak and disturbing drama series ever attempted.

The music for the opening titles consisted of a voice whispering the first four lines of All Things Bright and Beautiful over a montage of animals’ faces, distorted by a rippling water effect, exacerbating the hydrophobia angle of the series.’

Ah, that’ll be why then.

Posted 03:26 PM on Tue Jan 05 2010

By Freak

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