Why Thunderbirds is still FAB
  
Did any person in the 20th century make so many children so happy as
Gerry Anderson, asks Simon Heffer.
 
  By Simon Heffer 7:00PM GMT 15 Jan 2011
 
 
 Gerry Anderson has confirmed that he is to make a new
television series of Thunderbirds Photo: PA
 

It is rare that one can say one was in at the start of something big, but this week I was reminded of a rare instance when I was. I was five years old, I had had my fish fingers for tea, and I was parked in front of the television on a Saturday evening. According to the newspaper, there was a programme on that would excite children of all ages.

 
An hour later, I felt as though the whole landscape of what passes for my imagination had been changed. I had just watched the first episode of Thunderbirds. It caused an excitement of the sort that is possible only for the very young, and it lasted for days. Indeed, every Saturday night was a renewal of the miracle. In that age before video recording, it was impossible to be anywhere else.
 
The reminder came the other day when the series’ creator, Gerry Anderson, announced to the world that he was about to make another series. There were only two, and the last was in 1966. Some of us have waited more than half a lifetime for this moment. As for Mr Anderson, he is something of a legend. The 81-year-old has websites devoted to him and his work. His puppet shows are shown all over the world, still, and the merchandise related to them – cars, space vehicles and figures – sells like the proverbial hot cakes.
 
Mr Anderson made several other series, but nothing has resonated quite like the goings-on at Tracy Island. Thunderbirds has thrilled generations of children. I was not the only father of a certain age who, in the 1990s, made the supreme sacrifice of sitting and minding the small ones in front of the television while they, too, marvelled at the adventures of International Rescue. I bet that if one were to watch most children’s programmes from the 1960s now, they would look impossibly dated and dull. Mr Anderson’s are as fresh as a daisy.
 
At the time, I was rebuked by my children for having lost along life’s journey so much of the stuff that came with being a Thunderbirds obsessive. None of my model vehicles had made it into my early middle age. Nor had my Thunderbirds books, or my Thunderbirds game, which I seem to recall was about getting The Hood before The Hood got International Rescue.
 
To make up for this deficiency, a large amount of folding money changed hands in order to bribe a boy slightly older than mine into selling me his model of Thunderbird Two, when one of my children decided that his life would end without it. It was worth every penny. Then there was the hot afternoon in New York when my wife and I chanced upon a shop in Tribeca selling vintage toys, where we bought various rare die-cast models that drove our boys wild with excitement.
 
Which brings me to ask the inevitable question about Mr Anderson: did any person in the 20th century, even Enid Blyton or Richmal Crompton, make so many children so happy? I was hooked by his earlier puppet shows – all employing his great device of Supermarionation – almost as soon as I could walk. My earliest televisual memory is of Supercar. Stingray was quite jolly, but like all very small boys I always felt that Marina, Troy Tempest’s squeeze, got in the way. (It was, so she tells me, Mrs Heffer’s favourite programme, precisely for that reason.)
 
Fireball XL5 was, literally, out of this world, and showed Mr Anderson’s talent for dramatising his futuristic adventures in that overexcited, cod-American way that children thought was the sort of thing that their parents expected – and so made us feel frightfully grown-up. And there was always an element of danger in what Mr Anderson presented to us. As the voiceover used to say at the start of Stingray: “Anything can happen in the next half-hour!”
 
Thunderbirds was really grown-up, though. It was not half an hour, it was an hour (including advertisements). This was apparently at the insistence of Lew Grade, who – like the man in the electric razor ad – had liked Anderson’s work so much he decided to buy his company. He saw a test run of the first show and was so overwhelmed by it that he demanded all the programmes be doubled in length. It must be remembered that we watched these shows in black and white, even though they were made in colour for the American market: but they were none the less a stunning spectacle in their innovation, imagination and drama.
 
Mr Anderson ensured that all the elements we children discerned in whatever grown-up television we had been allowed to watch were present in Thunderbirds: dramatic theme and incidental music; well-developed plots; goodies and baddies; swaggering Americans, at a time when the whole of Britain was in a cultural cringe to them; and, of course, glamorous locations, all filmed on a trading estate in Slough.
 
Mr Anderson’s then wife, Sylvia, a partner in his firm, managed to grab the most cultish role in this cult: she was the voice of Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward, International Rescue’s permanently cool, calm and collected London agent. Second only to her in the cult stakes was her ineffable butler and chauffeur, “Nosey” Parker, an ex-con gone straight and now pathetically devoted to his mistress. I always presumed he was only ever a puppet because the late Sid James was not free at the time to play him. His catchphrase – “Yuss, milaydee” – has passed into the national iconography.
 
Then, of course, there was the nail-biting tension of the rescues themselves – a tension that presents itself again and again, however often one watches the old episodes. Many men in their fifties have spent decades wondering how a rescue craft laden with kit could travel 10,000 miles in about half an hour, but that will teach us to fail to suspend disbelief.
 
Mr Anderson was speaking last week because the Royal Mail, which is sadly not what it used to be, has chosen to mark the show’s 50th anniversary with a series of stamps. Unlike most who receive this accolade today, he actually deserved it. He only holds the MBE, which is shameful. Perhaps the new series of Thunderbirds that he has promised will lead to a knighthood.
 
It is not clear, however, whether the new series will involve puppets or actors. There can be no debate: it has to be puppets, especially since Sid James is no longer available. We know what we like, and we know what we expect: episodes packed with rocketing machines, screeching cars and staggering puppets. Anything else would not be remotely FAB – would it, milaydee?.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Deserving knighthoods and something good from Slough. Click below to launch this week's episode....
     
     
   
     
     
   
   
   
   
The article is available at:
   
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/simonheffer/8261297/Why-
Thunderbirds-is-still-FAB.html