Rentaghost. Now I know most collective memories will recall the mostly rubbish period of Miss Popov and Dobbin the pantomime horse, but cast your mind back to the very first series.

There was Mr Claypole the jester, Mr Davenport, the Victorian dandy and Fred Mumford from the present day. A man who had just died, but who couldn't face telling his parents that he was dead.

Heavy stuff for a seven-year-old. Still think about it to this day.

I wasn't much of a Rentaghost fan, so I'm afraid I must beg a certain detachment about that programme.

The old Captain Scarlet bothered me a bit, though. It unusually presented a bleak view of death hitherto hidden from the sensibilities of callow little boys like me. Just the two glowing hoops sweeping over dead bodies was enough, but I remember clearly an episode where CS faces off a Mysteron and pushes him back towards a bunch of power cables. The Mysteron fries, complete with blood-curdling scream and sparks flying from behind his neck. Not your usual 'Bang! Uhhh..(falls limply without blood)'.

Fair had me taken aback. Randall & Hopkirk Deceased was okay. Death was all white suits and terrific farting about with blink-of-an-eye disappearing and re-appearing. But Captain Scarlet got down to it. Death was death, no messing about.

Except for Scarlet himself, of course.

Captain Scarlet,
Went to toilet.
Mysterons came,
And pulled chain.

Was ever there a more terrifying spectre on toddler's programmes than that of Raggety on Rupert Bear, though?

(Apologies for size of pic, but...)





He really used to spook me, as a tiny child. I couldn't watch the programme at all!

Looks like they've tried to sanitize him (and the nightmares of the nation's children) now, though:

If were just talking fear, then the Open University ident used to scare the shit out of me. Thankfully, from the comments under the clip, I wasn't the only one.

It just builds up to a crescendo of dread, then finishes you off with that terrifying single note at the end [shudder].

Oh, and this:

That updated Raggety looks like a freeze frame a split second before his face suddenly elongates and the profile sharpens, his eyes glow amber and he shows his jagged teeth and long claws.

Stumpy, I have no real idea what that creature is, but by Christ it terrifies me as it appears to have awakened some long dormant half-remembered and awful memory from when I was a small child. I swear I am going to have a fucking nightmare about that thing tonight.

Transformers - The Movie always bugged me a bit. Entire planets being eaten and the inhabitants dropped in acid vats, other people eaten alive by robot sharks quite graphically and Optimus Prime being murdered in front of our eyes.

If were just talking fear, then the Open University ident used to scare the shit out of me. Thankfully, from the comments under the clip, I wasn't the only one.

I felt really strange whenever I heard that music. I can only suggest that perhaps its full, terrifying power can only be completely felt when heard late at night, preferably when you're alone in the dark. Mind you, what's worse, that music or a Pringle-wearing beardie in black and white talking to you about advanced mathematical theory?

I remember an episode of Noddy where the Binkie the naughty monkey was almost hysterically screaming at the end "I was only trying to help" which quite upset me. To be honest, he was always being a pain in the arse so he can't complain that he wasn't believed if he was genuinely trying to help this once.

In my memory, he was hung from a lamp-post at the end of the episode but I feel this maybe a confusion with the Hartlepool story.

Does anyone remember one of those schools films that involved a motorcyclist behind a plot to submerge Norfolk? Put me off Norfolk for a long time. Cloudburst or something

I was that motorcyclist!

BoD - it was indeed called 'Cloudburst' and was part of the Look and Read series. Unbelievably, it was repeated on the CBBC channel a few years ago.

Written by the absolutely godlike Richard Carpenter (not the MOR one, but the man behind Catweazle, Robin of Sherwood etc).

Oh, the character on the picture I posted was Noseybonk, off the children's TV show Jigsaw.

Stumpy Pepys wrote:

QUOTE:
Oh, the character on the picture I posted was Noseybonk, off the children's TV show Jigsaw.

Noseybonk used to scare the beejesus out of me, the expressionless face, the mad staring eyes, the frankly phallic and massive nose, all combined to produce a malevolent monstrosity of a children's TV character.

There is something very unnerving about the opening titles to "Rupert The Bear":
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb4G8t1pmb8

Personally, I was scared more or less senseless by that invisible thing in "Why Don't You?" that left white footprints everywhere (the Dorriss?).