It’s our first episode in Season 4 of the podcast dedicated to celebrating life as a child in 1970’s Britain and the central part that television played in our lives then.
Our host Oliver shares his memories of learning what a threepenny bit equated to in terms of sweets and how decimalisation in 1971 brought us “New Pence” and his Granny’s ready reckoner. He also admits to being one of the lost generation who were taught metric at school when the whole country used Imperial measures and, as a result can’t tell his kilos from his stones.
Building on the money theme we look back at Lee Majors as The Six Million Dollar Man. Whilst the ethics of rebuilding an injured man as a super powered cyborg without his consent may be difficult – it was brilliant for young children in the 70’s. He even got a bionic girlfriend and struck up a friendship with Bigfoot!
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I had the misfortune of living in a different ITV region to my school friends, despite being only a five minute walk away. Their region put out the Six Million Dollar Man on Thursdays when ours didn’t, so it took a while before I got to see it – finally catching the opening titles when visiting my cousins.
Back then ITV companies has a free range to put whatever they wanted on Thursday evenings, which meant they could put out local interest shows in primetime. Instead it usually meant imports and feature films.