Common Sense Dancing: Play's Cool

Even as a teen, I would have nostalgic conversations with friends about the television we watched during our younger years.

Coming from different households there would be common programmes, and fringe shows that only a few watched and none of the rest of us remembered. Taken together, they all brought humour, song, teaching, different ways of telling stories, different styles of presentation - real world, puppets, cartoon or stop-frame animation, mixtures of all of them. They would engender laughter, fear, questions.. But they all left a huge impression on us, and even now as I find myself rather older than the teen I once was, those programmes still live me.

It was another BBC documentary which gave me the idea for this song, one concerned with 'The Golden Age of Children's Television.' It defined this era, for the UK at least, as being from the mid 50s to the late 80s - essentially when the broadcasting companies had their own in-house children's programming departments. And this, rather neatly, included my childhood.

Once I had the chorus, I wrote out all the children's television programmes I remembered, and sought to include as many as had made an impression on me without it seeming just like a list. There needed to be context, a story. Many didn't make it in, for reasons of scansion, song-length, relevance to the emotional mood, etc.

Every so often after gigs it gets suggested that I should do a verse about such-and-such a programme, and I sympathise with the suggestions these people make. But I am happy with what I have written, it works for me, describes my experience, and am pleased that it has resonances for others; and I would be utterly delighted to hear of their songs, poems, stage plays, short stories, paintings, interpretive dances, etc. of their experiences of the art of children's entertainment and broadcast education through their formative years.

There's enough art in the universe for everyone to have a go.

Many thanks to Sarah Sharp for playing violin on this.

I had hoped to get Brian Cant to appear on this tune, speaking where the violin solo comes. Though his agent thought he might have been interested to do it, sadly, he was too ill at the time, so the playful, nostalgic melody that was written as a contingency ended up being a necessity. He died later that year. As well the late Clive James, Common Sense Dancing is also dedicated to the memory of Brian. He brought so much happiness to so many millions of children for many, many years.

So let your eyes mist today, and I'll see you tomorrow for a bit of a change of gear!