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He cannot be returned.
A great shame. The antithesis of today's autocue-reading shop-window dummy presenters, talented and naturally relaxed in presentation. A staple of childrens' television, and one of the best.
Word. Will any of today's shouty cretins be remembered as fondly? Not a chance in hell.
RIP TH.
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He cannot be returned.
One of the few celebrity deaths in this already over-saturated media century that has made me feel genuinely saddened. Farewell, Tony Hart.
My thoughts in more depth and with more verbs
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He cannot be returned.
One of the most enjoyable things I ever did as a mag writer was going round Tony Hart's gaff in 2002. I was doing a big feature for a newspaper where people who applied to go on 70s kids shows but never got on were given the opportunity to meet the presenters and have it out with them.
I took a professional artist who got knocked back for the Gallery to his cottage in Surrey, and spent about three hours in Tony Hart's studio, which he still worked in and was encrusted with awards. There was Morph and Chas in a glass case, a dusty Swap Shop award, and piles and piles of works in progress. He was quite easily one of the nicest people I've ever met. He was just like he was on the telly, although he looked a bit naked without a cravat.
He explained to this bloke that he never picked out any of the artwork for the gallery - there were so many entries every week that they all got sent to a warehouse in Acton to be sifted through by a team of retired old dears, who would pick out stuff if the artist had the same name as their grandchildren and things like that.
The artist actually had the roughs of his piece that he did when he was nine (a painting of his house), and brought them out, and Tony Hart spent a good twenty minutes going through it, pointing out that he must have been advanced for his age by getting the tiling in on the roof, and that in a years' time he would have worked in the shading. This bloke - who was a very successful commercial artist - regressed 20 years on the spot. So did I.
Then the artist got out a piece that he'd just finished, a intensely elaborate fantasy painting with a dragon flying around a castle. And Tony Hart's face absolutely lit up. "Oh! Dear boy! That's wonderful!" Then he spent another twenty minutes asking questions about it.
I felt guilty about butting in, but I had an in-route. "We've got a mutual friend, Tony - Colin Bennett". "You know Colin? Oh, he's the loveliest man I've ever met..." and then he told me about how his kid died during the run of Take Hart and how he had to hold it down and look cheerful while his life was in ruins.
By the end of it, while we having tea and biscuits in his kitchen with his wife, I was thinking "I don't have any grandparents anymore - will you be my new grandpa?", and on the way back to London me, the artist and the photographer (who was the most brilliantly cynical, un-arsed about celebrities person I've ever met) were banging on non-stop about how ace he was. And also feeling a bit sad knowing that I'd never see him again - which was weird, seeing as I'd only spent three or so hours with him.
I didn't know he'd had a stroke and couldn't draw anymore. I would have been well choked up about it.
(and thanks for making British people think of murals made of dried pasta when they hear Cavatina, instead of prisoners firing guns at their own heads)
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He cannot be returned.
When was it decided that what kids' telly ought to consist of was a non-stop bombardment of harsh, jangly stimuli? Were any actual kids consulted? With Oliver Postgate dying as well, there's a real sense that we're losing the vestiges of a kinder, saner era.
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- Mar 2008
- 14186
- The Deep South of England
- JPS Lotus
- Shortcake ...no, Custard Cream! ...no, Jammie Dodger...
He cannot be returned.
Wyatt Earp wrote:
When was it decided that what kids' telly ought to consist of was a non-stop bombardment of harsh, jangly stimuli? Were any actual kids consulted? With Oliver Postgate dying as well, there's a real sense that we're losing the vestiges of a kinder, saner era.
I suspect that kids who expressed a preference for calm, thoughtful and evocative entertainment would these days get labelled as 'dangerously subversive' and 'a possible threat', to be kept under surveillance for the rest of their lives!
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He cannot be returned.
I suspect that kids who expressed a preference for calm, thoughtful and evocative entertainment would these days get labelled as 'dangerously subversive' and 'a possible threat', to be kept under surveillance for the rest of their lives!
Terrific post, Nish. Almost choked me up, that.
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He cannot be returned.
Just taking up the point about contemporary telly, Alisha's just at the point of gravitating from CBeebies to CBBC at the moment and that's a bit of an eye opener - talk about kids' television by E numbers. Worst is what they've done to Basil Brush. The puppet looks like an actual fox's corpse, while his trademark laugh - once a splendidly resounding ha ha HWA HWA HWA HWA HWA!!!! has been reduced to a Kenneth Williams-style nasal cackle. Terrible.
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He cannot be returned.
The other thing I learned was that Morph and Chas are drug references. Sounds very Seaman Staines, I know, but Mr Bennett himself told me that.
Kids TV presenters used to be of uncle and auntie-age who specialised in something who seemed happy enough to talk about what they knew almost as a side project. Nowadays they're older brothers and sisters you're supposed to have a crush on or wear and do things you wish you could grow up to do. You'd think the way things are now, where the act of plonking your kids in front of a telly for a couple of hours is seen by most as an acceptible and even necessary part of parenting, that there'd be an even greater need for people like Tony Hart than ever before.
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