I know! Wretched
isn’t it?
That game show also introduced the wider viewing public to
Gillian Taylforth, so it’s got an awful lot to answer for, but it’s my own
fault for daring to venture across to “The Other Side” for my televisual treats
instead of sticking to good old “Auntie” like I ought to have done.
The BBC had a far more “respectable” approach to the whole
topic of safaris as witnessed by this magazine I found in a box recently, a
publication commemorating the “Blue Peter Royal Safari” as taken by the then
Princess Anne and Valerie Singleton way, way back in 1971.
Nowadays, I’m sure that WHSmith would use some sort of
ghastly bastardisation of the language and refer to it as a “Bookazine” but
back then, despite the stiffness of its covers, it was still a plain
old-fashioned “magazine” and would have set you back the Princ(ess)ly sum of 30 “new pence” or “six bob” in old money…
We had, after all, only just been “decimalised…”
(Some of us never really got over it…!)
So, is it worth an absolute fortune, now then…?
Sadly not.
AbeBooks have got a couple going for about four quid, so
it was hardly an investment, but it was interesting to look through, especially
when you get to this page towards the end when you see two young women walking
along the seashore in, what might seem to the casual observer, an
ever-so-slightly “raunchy” manner and you have to remind yourself just who it
is that you’re looking at as they’re strolling along the sand in their swimwear
looking as if they haven’t a care in the world.
I nearly “met” Princess Anne once, you know. I did “meet”
one of her security officers who didn’t seem all that pleased with me, I can
tell you…
I was in Bristol and was trying to get past the theatre
where a crowd had gathered and blocked the pavement. Being just a tiny, weeny
bit drunk at the time I decided that I wasn’t going to go around the crowd, and
I wasn’t going to hang around waiting for it to go away…
No way…!
I was going to go through it…
And I decided to do it just as H.R.H. emerged from the front
door of the theatre…
Oh, we can laugh about it now, but at the time it was…
perfectly all right, actually…
Originally written for "MAWH - Light Under A Bushel" July 5th, 2012 but not published.
Originally written for "MAWH - Light Under A Bushel" July 5th, 2012 but not published.