Happy Birthday Ulster Television…

Ok, it is a few days late… but I have been carrying this card around for months.

I suppose there are a few folks here who cannot remember live before Tinternet. I suppose there will be not so many who remember what life was like before TV.
Do I?

Well not really. I certainly watched the 1956 Cup Final in Uncle Jackies house (that’s the one where the Manchester City goalie Bert Trautmann broke his neck). And 1957 when the Manchester United keeper Ray Wood was taken out by Peter McParland of Aston Villa.

And Auntie Mary, who was a bit of an opera singer would come out of the kitchen to sing “Keep Right On To the End of the Road” and “Abide With Me”.

Well ok I say “watched” but I dont suppose I did.

Sometime after that, my Granny and Pop got a TV. For some reason, we laughed a lot at Charlie Drake, who my granny was convinced was a wee woman and at Sgt Bilko cos he looked like Uncle Jackie.

My daddy took me to Grannys every day and we watched the News including the one where my daddy said “oh my God” because a plane had crashed at Munich in Germany with my team from the previous years Cup Final on board.

So we really did watch the 1958 Cup Final, that was the one where the Harry Gregg was barged into the back of the net by Nat Lofthouse.
Goalies had a hard time of it in the 1950s.

“He would not have tried that with Tommy Breen…Breen would have buried him”

Mr Breen lived across the Falls Road and had played for United. Oh and he took up the collection in St Pauls on a Sunday.

Back then the News always seemed to be about Harold McMillan going to Moscow and wearing a funny hat.

In 1959 the talk was that we would have our own TV station and we would have our own TV…an Ekco.

And so on a Saturday in September, we sat down to watch the Farnborough Air Show. See…back then the point was that whatever was on TV was watched.

On 1st November, they broadcast All Souls Night, a play by Joe Tomelty. Everyone watched it. These were local actors, some of whom were known to my father, Uncle Jackie and Auntie Mary.

Of course, I was just 7 years old and UTV/ITV was way better than BBC. The jewel in the Crown was Robin Hood. Yeah some say Kevin Costner is Robin Hood but I say Richard Greene. Some sing “Everything I Do I Do it For You” and I sing “Robin Hood, Robin Hood Riding Thru the Glen”.

The thing is, there was always something to watch on UTV. William Tell, Sir Lancelot and Ivanhoe made stars or at least character actors out of Conrad Phillips, William Russell and Roger 007 Moore and if you look closely, the same stock company of actors, costumes and scenery turned up in Sherwood Forest, Camelot and Merrye Olde England….oh and there was also Richard the Lionheart (Dermot Walsh).

For the more modern-minded we could go swashbuckling with The Buccaneers (Robert Shaw).

But UTV was local and unlike the BBC, it was homely.

Anne Greig and Ivor Mills read the News and we preferred them to Michael Bageley and the funereal Maurice Shillington.

Presenters were Adrienne McGuill (the legend from Romper Room), Brian Durcan (the Kafflick one) and James Greene who recently showed up in “Little Britain”, “Big School” and “Wolf Hall”.
Charles Witherspoon did quirky vox pops and Rugby man Ernie Strathdee did the Sport.

Realistically there was no “News” in the early 1960s.

A man called James Jimmy Boyce was some kinda urbane quasi cultural type with stories about fairy trees and the like.

We had an Epilogue as the last programme of the night. There was a rota of Church of Ireland, Catholic, Methodist and Presbyterian to send us off to bed with a message from GOD.

Tommy James played the piano every night at 6pm and played requests for William and Martha who were married 50 years in Broughshane and for Bernadette who was having her 21st in Newry.
Every night.

Every night…cos there was no News. And some enthusiastic but not very good singers sang “Lovely Derry on the Banks of the Foyle”. Quite possibly they knew a second song but I don’t recall what it was.

To emphasise that we would watch anything cos there was nothing else. there was Frank Carson who said “come on on in” to the Half Door Club and the singers (Theresa Duffy, Gertie Wynne and Peter Tumelty) were actually quite good. Peter was a barber in Portaferry and a friend of one of my 1970s bosses. “Great singer and best barber around….Id like to see Val Doonican cut hair”.

We did of course have commercials but we called them advertisements. It was nearly all Toothpaste……Gibbs SR and “you’ll wonder where the yellow went, when you brush your teeth with Pepsodent”.

We even had local firms.

“JB Kennedy’s Bread. Sticks in your belly like lead. Not a bit of wonder, you f**t like Thunder, J B Kennedy’s Bread”. …if I recollect correctly.

It was pre-Gloria Honeyford. Pre-Eamonn Holmes. Pre-Julian. Pre-Pamela Ballentine.
And pre-Troubles.
It was of course rubbish.
But it was OUR rubbish.
The only thing I have learned from 60 years as a couch potato is that the word “local” means “rubbish”.

Anyway Happy Birthday UTV.

I will celebrate by watching the real Robin Hood on YouFlix or NetTube.

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