June 1968 and if the readers’ letters in TV Times are anything to go by, the psychedelic intoxicants so beloved of the age had reached the makers of children’s TV. No, not ‘The Magic Roundabout’, something else, as you can see in detail here.
“As an admirer of the general high standard of the children’s magazine programme ‘Come Here Often’”, wrote Keith Graham, “I was mystified to hear a Mozart Overture used as background music to a meat hacking sequence at Smithfield Market, and Charles Lindbergh taking flight to the strains of Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyrie. Naturally it’s a good idea to acquaint younger viewers with the classical repertoire at the earliest opportunity, but they should also know about the ‘theatre of the absurd’ and respect for the dead.”
I’d have thought that exposing the youth of the day to meat hacking was a bit more of a concern, but each to their own. Thank God they didn’t use the Grateful Dead.
