Scott Bakula played Dr. Sam Beckett, a scientist who in the year 1999 invented the Quantum Leap accelerator, a device that allowed time travel within the lifetime of the person travelling. Faced with having his funding cut Sam tests out the machine by using it himself, and so begins his travels through time.

Trouble is, something went a little wrong (or caca as the original introduction to the programme put it) and whilst Sam does indeed travel through time, he does so by having his consciousness jump into the bodies of people from the past.

Seemingly stuck, and initially not knowing where he is due to his “swiss cheesed” memory, he soon comes to rely on his erstwhile assistant Al Calavicci (played by Dean Stockwell). Al is broadcast back through time in the form of a hologram, and tries to help Sam out in whatever predicament he finds himself in.

The pair soon come to realise that in order for Sam to leap again, he must first put something right in history that initially went wrong the first time around. Al uses Ziggy, the Quantum Leap computer, to try and discover what Sam must do, presenting possible options for Sam, each helpfully given a probability that it is the correct course of action to take.

Whilst having an obvious science fiction slant due to the presence of time travel and holograms, the show also had a far more traditional feeling about it at the same time. I suppose it was kind of Star Trek meets The Littlest Hobo in a way. The situations that Sam ended up in were usually all very human in the end, involving reuniting people, calming feuds and that kind of thing.

As viewers we always saw the person Sam had leapt into as Sam, but there was always a reveal at the beginning of each episode where Sam would look in a mirror to see who he had become. It was always a little strange when you saw that Sam had leapt into the body of a woman, as you would then usually see Scott Bakula in a dress for the rest of the episode. Sometimes this was played out for laughs at Scott Bakula’s expense, but more often than not you soon accepted the idea and didn’t even notice that you were enjoying watching a man solve problems whilst wearing a dress.

The show aired for five seasons, and has garnered itself a huge following of devoted fans over the years both from the original showings and repeats. There have also been rumours that there is currently a Quantum Leap movie in production, although it appears that Bakula and Stockwell may only feature in cameo roles, which rather questions the point of making a film in the first place.

Quantum Leap

OK, at the end of the day all they were was regular old salted crisps, but there was something strangely compelling about opening a packet, rummaging around inside for the little blue sachet of salt, sprinkling said salt over the crisps, then holding the packet closed at the neck and furiously shaking it about in the hope that the salt might just reach the crisps at the bottom of the packet. It was just fun!

The brand was first launched in the 1920’s, making them one of the UK’s oldest types of crisps. They were apparently invented by Frank Smith and sold to pubs in the Cricklewood area of London. Prior to the invention of the “little blue bag of salt”, Smith had provided salt cellars for people to salt their crisps with, but the sachet came into existence simply because people were using too much salt and the cellars were emptied too quickly.

The little blue bag unsurprisingly became the identifier for these crisps, eventually being turned into a little character who appeared on the packets. Strangely he was square in shape, whilst the sachets were rectangular.

I have two very vivid memories of these crisps from my childhood. The first was the day we bought a packet of Salt ‘n’ Shake and found no less than six little blue bags of salt. I needed a drink after finishing that packet I can tell you.

The second memory was of a short lived attempt to expand the brand with the introduction of Flavour ‘n’ Shake crisps. As you can probably guess in these instances the little sachets contained flavourings of different types, although if I remember correctly they were only standard flavours like Cheese and Onion or Salt and Vinegar. I think the sachets may have been different colours depending on the flavour, but I don’t remember for sure.

The brand did disappear for a time, probably sometime during the Nineties, but they were brought back in 2003 by Walkers, who now own all the Smiths Crisps brands. Whilst it’s good to see them back on shop shelves, they do now go under the name of Walkers Formerly Smiths Salt & Shake Crisps, which is both a bit of a mouthful and has dropped the old abbreviated ‘n’ for a boring old ampersand…

It consisted of a circular piece of plastic that had pictures of different animals running around it. In the centre of the toy there was a plastic arrow with a picture of a farmer on it. You turned the arrow to point at a particular animal, let’s say the cow, then pulled a string on the side which caused the arrow to spin around like mad and for the toy to utter the words “The cow says… Moo!”.

Somehow this toy mesmerised me. Perhaps it was the hypnotic spin of the arrow, or more likely just the crackly pronunciation of the recorded voice, but I sat there twisting the arrow and pulling the string until I had heard everything the farmer had to say, much to the annoyance of my mate who probably wanted to go off and play with toy cars or something with me.

A little on the history of this toy then to finish off. The first version was released in 1965 by Mattel and the sounds were stored on a little plastic disc, a bit like an old vinyl record. It has undergone surprisingly few revisions over time, with the first major change being replacing the pull string with a lever in the late Eighties. This change occured after a little girl was blinded by the string snapping and flicking into her eye.

The modern version appears to have more sounds to choose from now, as the ring with the animals on it is now a hinged piece of plastic which can be flipped over like the pages of a book. Apparently the exact same animal sounds are still used in it, although they are now digitised onto a computer chip rather than etched into a plastic disc.

All three Telebugs looked somewhat similar, with sleek curved bodies and a television screen for a head. They differed in size and colour. CHIP (Coordinated Hexadecimal Information Processor) was the notional leader, and was the tallest and white in colour. SAMANTHA (Solar Activated Micro Automated Non-inTerference Hearing Apparatus) was yellow and, being a girl had a red ribbon moulded to the top of her head (in so far as a robot can be called female anyway).

The smallest Telebug was called BUG (Binary Unmanned Gamma camera) and he was red in colour, and was, I suppose given his name, the cameraman of the group. He also had a pet named MIC (Mobile Independent Camera) who flew alongside him and helped in filming duties.

The Telebugs travelled around by flying. Instead of legs they had booster rockets, which enabled them to both hover in place and fly off to the rescue of some poor hapless civilian.

Professor Brainstrain was the inventor of the Telebugs, though unfortunately he had a bit of a problem pronouncing the letter R, so he referred to himself as Pwofessor Bwainstwain.

Of course, as with all good superheroes there were a number of baddies who they went up against on a regular basis, and were generally the cause of all the problems that the Telebugs had to put right. The big bad guy was called Baron Bullybyte, who owned a super computer called Angel Brain which he used to cause most of the trouble.

Bullybyte’s sister Magna was also a bit of a trouble maker, as was Zudo Bug. Zudo Bug was also invented by Professor Brainstrain, but unfortunately he ended up turning evil thanks to a bit of mis-programming caused by Brainstrain’s cat Grumble.

The cartoon was made by Telemagination and 86 episodes were made, first airing in 1986 and 1987.

I confess that before Blockbusters came along I don’t think I had ever heard of Bob Holness, but both him and the show for which he is best known soon became firm favourites in our household, with everybody in the family joining in with the quiz whilst we were having our evening meal.

Whilst Bob Holness was probably best known to many for TV quiz shows, being the host on Blockbusters, a revival of the word panel game Call My Bluff and indeed his first appearance on British TV on the show Take A Letter (don’t worry if you’ve not heard of this one, it was on in the early Sixties) his career spanned almost 60 years with the main stay of his career being in radio presenting.

Holness was born in South Africa in 1928, although his family moved to the UK when he was a child and this is where he was educated. In the Fifties he returned to South Africa and in 1955 became a radio presenter. In 1956 he became the second actor to ever portray James Bond when he recorded a radio version of Moonraker, voicing the secret agent.

Bob was also the subject of an urban myth that claimed he had played the saxophone on Gerry Rafferty’s hit Baker Street. Not one to disappoint Bob used to play along with this myth and also embellish it, as he would also lay claim to being the lead guitarist on a song called Layla by Derek and the Dominoes.

Sorry, channelling Harry Hill there for a bit.

I wrote this week about the annual Christmas tradition of the big tin of chocolates, and back in the Eighties it was normally down to a choice between Quality Street and Roses, since these were really the only options available back then.

Long time readers of this site may remember I used to do a weekly “Saturday Survey”, so I thought I’d bring it back briefly to attempt to answer the question as to which brand of chocolates was the nation’s favourite in the Eighties.

The two big players in the Christmas sweet market in the Eighties, who are both still very popular today, were Quality Street and Roses. Our household were very much in the Quality Street camp.

We were never allowed to open the tin of Quality Street until Christmas Eve, which I think went some way towards making the whole experience of them that much sweeter (no pun intended).

On Christmas Eve my Mum would open up the tin, and put a few large handfuls out into a serving tray, which then sat on the sideboard (and topped up when necessary) along with the other Christmas staples of Orange and Lemon jelly slices, nuts and a box of Eat Me dates (which were only ever eaten by my Dad several weeks after Christmas).

My personal favourite was and still is the Green Triangle, although I’m also quite partial to the Strawberry and Orange creams. I also liked the Gooseberry cream which looked identical to the Orange cream but was in a green wrapper. They did bring this sweet back for a special edition version a couple of years back, and I had to confess that until this happened I was convinced the green fruit cream flavour had been lime, but obviously not.

The only problem with Quality Street was the sheer number of toffee sweets included, and indeed I feel this is still a flaw of the selection now. When the tin was nearing the end there was always a huge number of Golden Pennies, the Caramel Finger (the thin yellow one) and a little hard square lump of toffee which thankfully has now been dropped.

My Auntie on the other hand always plumped for the Cadbury’s Roses, so when we went to visit her at Christmas time we always looked forward to sampling some of her sweets as well. The Roses selection never seemed as interesting to me for some reason, although I really don’t understand why now I look back on it, since for the most part the two brands have got equivalent sweets in them.

Today I still enjoy having a tin of Quality Street in the house at Christmas, although we’ll sometimes plump for Celebrations instead. Roses are banned from the house now though, after I mistakenly ate a Brazil Nut Toffee one year and got rushed off in an ambulance one Christmas after suffering an Anaphylactic shock. I suppose I should be thanking them though, since they did confirm that I had a nut allergy, which was something I had suspected for a while but didn’t know for sure until that day.

As an avid goggle box guzzling Eighties child though, I think the thing that really started to indicate the coming of the Christmas season were the changes that suddenly occurred on the television. A number of changes happened, normally around the time December began, and in this post I want to discuss some of them. So, in no particular order…

The Christmas Movie and TV Specials Preview Adverts

One of the first signs that Christmas was coming was the arrival of the trailer advert that showed all the films that a channel would be boasting come Yuletide.

This was a time when we didn’t have satellite TV and therefore channels devoted to playing movies, which meant that it often took several years after their box office releases before films finally made it onto TV. Christmas was therefore a time when the TV channels had a captive audience, and so the majority of movie premiers occurred during the Yuletide break. The advert was thus always very exciting as you made a mental checklist of all the films you wanted to see.

There was also another similar trailer advert showing all the Christmas specials of various TV shows that you could look forward to watching whilst waiting for the turkey to digest.

As soon as the Christmas editions of the TV Times and Radio Times became available I would then scour the pages of them to identify all these wonderful films and shows I wanted to watch, and would note down when they were on, which channel, and how long they were, so I could also make sure I had enough video tape space to record anything I wanted to keep.

Christmas TV Idents

Not that I knew they were called Idents back then (indeed, they may well not have been called that until recently) but another change that occured to the TV was the introduction of the Christmas Idents. These are the little snippets of film or animation that TV stations play whilst the announcer tells you about the next and following TV shows.

These days the complexity of TV channel idents has become quite extreme, with Channel 4 in particular having some very impressive examples, but back in the Eighties we were just as impressed by the TV station logo just having a layer of snow across the top of it.

Christmas Product Adverts

The sorts of products that got advertised in the run up and after Christmas also changed, and as a kid one of the most notable changes was that toys suddenly started to be advertised.

Hard to believe (and it is possible my memory is wrong on this point, but I don’t think so) but toys just weren’t advertised on TV for the rest of the year. I guess TV advertising cost a whole lot more back then so advertising toys just wasn’t cost effective for manufacturers during the rest of the year, as I believe far fewer toys were bought outside of the Christmas period that are bought today.

Other products that started to be advertised before Christmas were things like fragrances and soaps (I’m thinking of the Yardley adverts in particular, but also Brut 33, Denim and Old Spice), alcohol (Harvey’s Bristol Cream with Hinge and Bracket, and QC Sherry), and sweets (Quality Street and Roses).

After Christmas you were then bombarded with all the adverts for various department store sales, which I guess we still get now, but you also quite often saw a lot of adverts for more local independent stores that wouldn’t bother to advertise on TV at any other time of year, again due to the prohibitive costs involved.

The Change To Normal Programme Schedules

Of course this still occurs today, although I think the schedules possibly return to normality a little quicker now. It also seemed more of a marked difference as the handful of channels we had back in the Eighties all changed dramatically around Christmas, whereas now a lot of the satellite and cable TV channels may only feature a temporary blip of changes before returning to their normal offerings.

I think we got a lot more better quality TV specials back then too. Most popular TV shows would be given a special edition programme, and again this happens still today, but we also seem to get a lot of what I can only call “filler” shows, such as the countless number of “Top 100 Best Sporting Mishaps” or “The Best 50 Car Chases” style compilation shows. These are far too easy to get sucked into watching, just so you can see which is the best thing, and I’m half expecting this year to see “The Top 50 Best Christmas Compilation Shows” air on Channel Five this year…