ANDY PANDY, TRANSVESTITE

The above graphic doesn’t relate to the story below, but I thought some might find it of interest. -Spikey

ANDY PANDY, TRANSVESTITE

By Rebecca Ridgeway

Do you remember Dylan the stoned bunny, Zebedee obsessing about “bed time” while bouncing around on that phallic spring and all that subliminal drug taking symbolism? Well, surprise surprise, the movie version of The Magic Roundabout has been sanitised. It bears absolutely no re-semblance to the controversial children’s teatime TV favourite that, 40 years ago, was the second most popular show on the BBC -behind the news – and prompted questions in high places over its possibly unsuitable content! In these politically correct times, anything that could be misconstrued has been surgically re-moved under sterile conditions and the new, all-singing, all-dancing CGI Magic Roundabout features Kylie Minogue as the voice of Florence and Robbie Williams as Dougal the dog. Say no more.

In a way, it’s a sad statement of the times in which we live because, these days; everything has to be vetted for double entendre. When I was a child we lived in an age of innocence, before people began believing that Lewis Carol was a paedophile and insinuating that there was something not quite right about Enid Blyton either.

Blyton’s Noddy has been pilloried for being racist, sexist, middle-class, gay, politically incorrect and nasty about people with big ears. But as an infant weaned on Noddy, I say three cheers for the elf who has had a shelf life of more than 50 years and is still not past his sell-by date, even though the journey through Toy-town in his little yellow car has been a rough ride. When I was a naive four- year-old learning to read, it never occurred to me that I was being subliminally brainwashed. And anyway, was I? The fact that golliwogs featured in the Noddy books and portrayed the criminal element didn’t have any obviously adverse effect on me, indeed I have always been fiercely anti-racist. I had my own golliwog who came second only to my teddy in the order of my affections.

I don’t feel that it corrupted me to read about Noddy and Big Ears sleeping together, enjoying “gay times in the woods” or “coming over all queer”, or that PC Plod went in for a lot of spanking. But perhaps we were all too trusting in those good old days when dolls were androgynous rather than erogenous and didn’t come with mysterious lumps, bumps, dangly bits and realistically-oozing orifices. Even my kid brother believed in a kind of Neverland (the Peter Pan version, not the Michael Jackson one) inhabited by fairies and genies where anything was possible, or why else would he have piped up one day, a serious look on his face, with the request: “Mummy, for Christmas I would like you to knit me a gun?”

Certainly, mother was blissfully unaware, as were we all, when we turned on the children’s TV cartoon Captain Pugwash that we were exposing ourselves to an early form of child pornography.

It seems incredible now, in these more worldly-wise times, that none of us twigged the sordid meaning behind the names Seaman Staines, Master Bates and Roger the Cabin Boy. If you’re aged 50 to 60 go on, ask a mate of the same age if they realised, at the time, what the names really meant and I’ll bet you they didn’t. The discovery, not that many years ago, that the author had been pulling a supersonic one came as quite a shock. But though I was saddened to learn that my childhood heroes had smutty names, I don’t think any lasting damage was done.

Children’s toys these days are far more sinister than most TV programmes anyway. What nightmares could result from playing with a gooey, eerie blob encased in dayglo slime and a plastic egg – a toy that the Metropolitan Police mistook for a human foetus when they found one abandoned at a railway station! What lasting psychological damage might result from Babyz, a virtual computer baby you can load on to your PC via CD Rom which gains in weight, grows hair, has teething pains, cries, eats and soils its nappy. Fail to take proper care of it and it screams and wrecks its virtual house. You can only nurture it until it reaches 15 months old when it disappears, a clever ploy by the manufacturers to insure you buy another baby. Disposable society, disposable baby, a great lesson to teach the kids! If toys are us, as the shrinks say, and they can have a damaging effect on the psyche, we’re going to be a weird lot come the next millennium.

Come to which, perhaps in that far distant future when we have all gone to live on Jupiter and genetically mutated into characters from Star Wars, with coathangers growing out of the top of our heads, we’ll find programmes like the Telly Tubbies racially discriminating. On the other hand, to future generations of Dr Spock look-alikes, perhaps Big Ears would be right back in fashion.

(My Comments: –

I don’t think we will have to wait for the next millennium to see the effects, you can see them all around you. Incredible selfishness, glutinous greed, and fear of almost everything. Modern day parents are frightened to let their children out of their sight, in case they are raped or murdered. As a result, we have a generation growing up with poor social skills, little or no exercise leading to obesity and allergies running riot. Doctors reporting the smallest bruise, social workers and courts placing kids in care and their parents in prison for the silliest reasons. It’s the Nanny State gone mad; as a result, more and more married couples are electing not to have kids. For one thing, the cost in monetary terms is astronomical, never mind the cost in worry and wear and tear on the body. Why on earth ‘the powers that be‘ import every idea from America, it should be blindingly obvious that American youth is totally out of control, is that what they want here? (Maybe that’s exactly what they want; gives them more control over the rest of us!!!)

I think the pendulum has swung far to far in favour of the do-good brigade, it’s about time it swung the other way. Bring back discipline, the Victorians were right; ‘spare the rod and spoil the child’, everywhere you go, spoiled brats demanding everything they see! Teachers, old folk, even some of the parents in fear of their lives, from spoiled, selfish, greedy, undisciplined children. Lets tell these do-good arseholes to shut their gobs and put the power back where it belongs, in the hands of the police, teachers, parents and give these dictatorial little bastards a lesson in manners before its too late and they grow up into the gangsters that American children have become!

If politicians concentrated less on running everyone’s lives and more on running the country, we would all be a lot better off! I’m much more interested in being able to walk the streets in safety, than which celebrity is walking out with who and why? I could give a shit! It’s a pity that TV is only concerned with profit instead of informing and educating an ignorant public. -Spikey)