1. Tom And Jerry

First  watched  :  Uncertain

Looking  through  the  BBC1  schedule  for  Sunday  6th  October  1968 - I'm  not  certain  we  had BBC2  at  this  point - this  is  the  only  thing  on  there  that  my  three year  old  self  could conceivably  have  watched  with  any  attention. As  it  preceded  The  News  And  The  Weatherman there's  a  good  chance  that  I  would  have  been  in  the  "front  room"   when  it  was  on.

According  to  the  RT  the  episode  broadcast  was  The  Flying  Cat  which  dates  from  1951. It departs  from  formula  in  that  Tom's  main  target  is  the  household  canary  and  Jerry  only intervenes  to  assist  them. At  one  point  Tom  is  sent  flying  through  a  chest  of  drawers,  finds himself  wearing  a  pair  of  curtains  and  realises  they  can  function  as  wings  giving  his adversaries  some  new  problems.

I  loved  Tom  And  Jerry  for  the  slapstick  but  as  the  years  went  on I  grew  a  bit  more  sympathetic  towards  Tom , wishing  he'd  score  the  occasional  victory  although  he  could  never  actually  eat  Jerry  until  the  final  episode  ( pre -Taggart  of  course ).  This  was  particularly  the  case  when  Jerry  brought  that  ugly  bruiser  of  a  bulldog  into  play. Dogs  were  my  main  childhood  fear  so  that  was  a  definite  no-no  -  fight  your  own  battles  you  sneaky  rodent !

Although  the  series  has  had  numerous  reboots  right  down  to  the  present  day  I  think  I'm  only  familiar  with  those  made  prior  to  1967. I  think  I  stopped  it  watching  on  anything  more  than  a  casual  basis  around  the  mid-70s  just  when  concerns  about  the  level  of  violence  in  it were  surfacing. In  The  Flying  Cat  , Tom  is  burnt, shredded  and  cloves  a  tree  in  two , testicles  first , amongst  other  mishaps.  This  violence  was  excised  altogether  in  the  late  seventies  reboot  which  was  loathed  by  fans.

In  the  mid-sixties  US  TV  started  editing  the  original  cartoons  in  an  early  example  of  political  correctness  to  remove  or  re-voice  the  black  housekeeper  Mammy  Two  Shoes  who  was  deemed  a  racial  stereotype.

In  some  episodes  Jerry  has  a  friend  or  nephew  , a  grey  mouse  in  a  diaper  called  Tuffy. In  1979  I  called  my  new  cat  that. It  wasn't  in  conscious  imitation  but  must  have  stuck  somewhere  in  the  cranium.