114 Captain Pugwash

First  watched  : 1973

This  was  actually  the  first  of  John  Ryan's  rolling-eyed  animation  series; the  first  series's  86  episodes  were  broadcast  between  1957  and  1966. Pugwash  was  a  basically  harmless, rather  cowardly  excuse  for  a  pirate  with  an  equally  motley  crew   who  were  usually  extricated  from  trouble  by  the  intelligence  of  clean  cut  Tom  the  Cabin  Boy. It  returned  after  some  years  off  screen  on  New  Year's  Day  1973  and  quickly  became  a  holiday  morning  staple. I  never  thought  too  much  of  it  but  it  seems  to  have  been  well-loved  and  Ryan  was  soon  re-commissioned  to  make  a  new  series  in  1974  which  ran  to  30  episodes. In  1997  the  rights  were  sold  to  the  Britt  Allcroft  Company  who  made  a  cartoon  series  The  Adventures  of  Captain  Pugwash   between  1997  and  2001.

You  still  get  pub  bores  telling  you  that  the  series  featured  rude  character  names  like  Master  Bates  and  Seaman  Staines  despite  Ryan, a  devout  Catholic, proving  in  court  that  this  urban  legend  originated  in  student  rag  mags  of  the  seventies  when  The  Guardian  and  Sunday  Correspondent  were  foolish  enough  to  print  it  as  fact  in  1991.