TV Editor Viv Hardwick looks back on ITV innocence.

TRUE confession time. As a child of the late 50s and early 60s, I was officially banned from watching early ITV children's programmes because my parents thought it was wrong to encourage TV financed by the power of advertising.

As a result, I only have vague memories of The Adventures Of Twizzle from 1957, glimpsed on the TV sets at the homes of relatives. So too were the 1959 efforts of Bishop Middleham-born Muriel "Aunty Mu" Young as she chatted to Pussy Cat Willum, although our favourite was the cheeky Ollie Beak, voiced by Wally Whyton.

Laughing at Basil Brush on ATV's Smalltime was always done with a guilty look over your shoulder. It also took quite a lot of ingenuity on the part of me and my brothers to sneak off "to play" at friends' homes to catch the wonders of Thunderbirds and Stingray. When it came to acting out our own versions of International Rescue, I had to use all my powers of persuasion to avoid being cast as Brains - because I was the only spectacles wearer - and be allowed to become Gordon piloting the yellow Thunderbird 4..

Eventually, pester power saw us goggle-eyed over the occasional episode of Rawhide, but it was the excellence of The Saint, Man In A Suitcase and Dangerman which finally weakened my parents' resolve regarding ITV's evil commercial intentions. But the seeds of doubt about ITV are now inbred in me. Not so, my own children. Such is the power of TV advertising that my daughter once howled until the glass stand of her dessert bowl was tied down with a ribbon in case it floated away like in the Angel Delight commercial. There remains a certain hiatus over whether my wife was actually going to stand on the dining room table to be told "she's a wonderful muvva" like another advert of the day. These days my daughter has been trying to persuade me to watch ITV1's Celebrity Love Island on the grounds "it isn't all about celebrities going to bed with each other". I almost half-believe her, but I prefer Sunday night's The Last Detective and the sex-starved adventures of Peter Davison. As for my parents, they're huge fans of the late Jeremy Brett, ITV's Sherlock Holmes. They've bought all the tapes so they can watch him without the adverts.

Published: 23/06/2005