Popular Nostalgia

Some of the greatest programs you ever watched as a kid were those educational productions on BBC 2 that were broken up with spelling lessons about “the magic E” drawn by a magic pen. One such program was Geordie Racer.

The actors on Geordie Racer hammed up their Geordie accents to the max, as the “gan doon toon” and all that.

Listen to the great theme tune here:

[audio:http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/lookandread/downloads/music/LR-1988-GeordieRacer.mp3]

Yet again, old TV appears to have been much more innocent than it is today – I can’t imagine this generation of children, with their mobile phones and Ipods would stand for a budget production about homing pigeons, but we did, and we loved it. It was also a valid excuse to get out of doing lessons at primary school, as they wheeled in the archaic video for us to watch Geordie Racer.

Days off school ill were always improved by viewing an episode, too.

Have a look at this classic example of Geordie Racer – the picture is poor, but that just adds to the authenticity as it reminds me of the quality of our old school video player…