Its November, but I didnt manage to get enough together for this month so instead im gathering up some festive memories for next month. Meantime heres October all over again…
As October arrives the demise of Wilko has inspired me to write about some of the big names from the high street that have disappeared from my lifetime. This month I’m focusing on both the names and formats of shops that have been gone from towns for years and years and yet linger on in my memory.
I am old enough, just, to remember when technology was a repairable commodity and not just a collection of cheap and easily replaceable items. Seeing as the TV plays such a big part in my childhood memories I should probably reflect on where those early TV sets came from, they weren’t ours but rented from Radio Rentals (and later Granada).
In the modern world just about every bit of technology is easily replaced, usually before it goes wrong, technology is even designed to become obsolete before the packet has been opened. So in the modern world the thought that you might actually rent, rather than own your tech seems completely out of touch. Although that said, I bet a lot of tech is purchased on credit which is just about the same thing.
The outside of an actual Radio Rentals shop.
Radio Rentals was the shop where we got our TV sets from, I remember our new set arriving in the late eighties. A very sleek square set complete with integrated stand with room for a video recorder. The TV was branded Baird which was a brand owned by Radio Rentals themselves. I’ve tried in vein to find a picture of a similar set – or even the remote control with no luck.
As for Radio Rentals itself, it was a showroom. You’d go into the shop and look at what was on offer but your set would be delivered separately – it wasn’t in store to take home that day, we only ever rented TV sets but I would imagine similar was true for the other equipment they rented out.
By the 1990s people were renting far less and the whole rental model was fast going out of fashion. At some point in the mid-90s our Baird set gave up the ghost. The TV repairman came – another relic of a bygone time – and we were left with a replacement set, not a new model but reconditioned. This one though was branded as a Granada Set.
I tried in vein to locate the sleek ‘Baird’ set we had but there is no tracy anywhere of a photo, I’m fairly sure its predecessor looked like one of these.
Granada were a well known TV company in the North West of England, they also owned service stations and of course a rental firm which was rival to Radio Rentals. The two companies did eventually merge – although this was much later than when we got our replacement set. I’m not sure of the logistics of it, perhaps we switched to Granada when the Baird gave up, or maybe Granada took on the business of Radio Rentals locally.
Either way that Granada set ended up being ours permanently. It wasn’t the greatest set in the world, it didn’t come with a stand resulting in a dramatic scramble to rearrange the living room so there was somewhere to place the TV. It also had a fault which was fixed with the classic slap on top of the set to fix.
At this point with most of my posts I ask the question, would it ever come back. The reality is if you want, or need as is more likely the case, to rent then you can still find places that will – usually with terrible credit agreements and otherwise, things are more affordable or can be bought with your flexible friend. The old world of rental shops is long gone now.
Kwik Save with its quirky spelling and cheap shelving was one of the first ‘discount’ supermarkets in the UK. It was cheap and cheerful but is remembered by me mainly for a few quirks with its stores when compared to other supermarkets of the era.
These days when you think of discount supermarkets its Aldi and Lidl that have been leading the way for over a decade. But when I was entering the world Kwik Save was the equivalent. In actual fact when Kwik Save was founded in the late 60s it drew a lot of inspiration from Aldi and its business operations.
Kwik Save stores generally had a smaller floor plan than other supermarkets (even the smaller scale high street supermarkets of the 80s and early 90s). They also had warehouse style shelving which to me as a toddler look like it towered high above me but even at that tender age, I was able to tell was distinctly cheaper than any other shop used.
The No Frills own label brand that you wouldn’t be seen dead with.
The other quirks of shopping in Kwik Save included the Liquor Save off-licence which was a separate store within a store complete with separate doors – I presume that was largely due to licencing laws preventing sales of alcohol at certain times.
Kwik Save also had one of the first cheapo own brands, coming before even Tesco Value was a thing. In plan packaging with a stencil typeface, if you saw someone with a ‘No Frills’ packet of crisps in their Lunchbox at school they certainly got judged.
I also remember that you had to pay for carrier bags, I think around 2p a time. This was long before that became standard practice and, of course, the law to do so.
My own fondest memory of shopping in Kwik Save was the walk through chiller. You pushed your trolley in one side picked what you wanted and walked out the other. Probably done to cut costs but just a massive novelty for me.
The classic Kwik Save bag that you had to pay for.
While having a ‘No Frills’ product might have carried a stigma in the playground I don’t remember the simple fact you might be seen shopping in there having any such mark attached, unlike Netto which you absolutely wanted to have no association with whatsoever.
KwikSave remained strong into the 90s but as the bigger supermarkets brought in their own budget ranges the business began to struggle and eventually merged with Sommerfield (remember them?). The plan was to turn them all into Sommerfields but they realised the majority of the stores were cheap and tacky so they didn’t bother eventually selling off Kwik Save once again.
Everything in this photo screams a bygone age of retail. The uniform, the tannoy microphone, the brush font on the signs – so dated now!
The last hurrah came in the early 2000s by which point Netto had been seen off and Aldi and Lidl were getting their feet under the table. Kwik Save won’t be back (although the brand was revived for used by convenience stores) and it won’t be missed as there are plenty of alternatives for discount groceries thesedays.
As for the novelty of the big walk-in Fridge – once you have worked in retail and had to move stock into and out of massive chillers, that novelty wears off quickly!
Everybody (who is old enough) will remember Woolworths, or Woolies as it was better known. Originating in America, for some reason as a nation we took the shop to our hearts until the while thing went bankrupt about 15 years ago and it was very sad to see it go.
As this is a blog concerning my memories I’ll jump right in to the Woolworth’s story at the point which I enter the world, the 1980s. At this point Woolworths UK business had become independent and the shops rationalised what they sold which as I remember was Music and Video, Sweets, Toys, Homeware and Children’s Clothes.
My local Woolworths store was a decent size considering it was located not even within a town centre but the shopping precinct built alongside the housing estate on which I lived. By its eclectic nature if you were after something non-food then Woolies would likely be the place you went.
The actual local branch of Woolies I talk about in my post.
Woolworths was particularly good as a shop for buying presents the variety of what it sold meant you were likely to find something decent for everyone. So naturally everyone received at least one present from Woolies every Christmas.
Woolies also made a success of music and video, succeeding where the traditional record shops really struggled. Someone at Woolies must have recognised that the VHS tape and later the DVD would be strong sellers and I remember that the range in even the smallest stores was always huge. Back then even the largest supermarkets usually only stocked a very limited range of CDs and videos.
Woolie and Worth the genius mascots from the final years of Woolworths.
Home video was so important that the company got into distribution which, ultimately resulted in its downfall. As MP3s took the music sales away and cheap DVDs that could be bought from the likes of Amazon meant there wasn’t much future for that core part of what Woolworths did by this point. At the same time the cheap and cheerful shops like Poundland were eating into their sales. Woolies was inevitably doomed.
I got this far and I haven’t even mentioned the thing most people think of when they think of Woolworths but not so for me. Perhaps I wasn’t allowed pick and mix all that often I’m not sure, I do remember the variety of sweets that spanned a plastic ‘island’ but my fond memories are based elsewhere.
The obligatory picture of the Pick ‘n’ Mix display.
When I was small I had my fair range of Ladybird clothes and plenty of Woolworths stationary. But when I came of age it was Woolworths where I went for CDs, DVDs and some Playstation games during my brief attempt at being a gamer. I’m even fairly sure that I got my Nokia 3330 mobile phone from Woolies just as everybody started getting connected.
By the time Woolworths went under I had moved away and the one thing that strikes me is in both the area I grew up in and London, there were Woolies everywhere, even in areas where there was just a small parade of shops, that’s probably why the nation held Woolies so close to their hearts and also probably why the business ultimately failed.
Every so often there are news reports (and once even a full blown hoax) that Woolworths could be returning – but it won’t. A combination of cheap shops like Poundland, Home Bargains and B&M have seen off any chance of that. In recent years Wilko largely filled the same void in town centres but that company too has suffered a similar fate as Woolies.
This musical trio popped up to provide a musical interlude on the cult children’s show Rainbow and they became so popular they gained their own spin off show and were still appearing in pantomime a decade later.
The trio had originally started as Rod, Matt and Jane – Matt being Matthew Corbet, later of Sooty fame. Matt was then replaced by Roger before Freddy Marks finally joined completing the trio.
Rod, Jane and Freddy would appear in some Rainbow episodes. They would turn up, sometimes as part of the overarching storyline such as everyone coming around for a picnic, and then find a way to perform a relevant musical number.
Rod, Jane and Freddy on their theatre stage set with their odd 1980s style mime-artist clothing.
On other occasions their song would be a completely separate recording without any interaction between the rest of the Rainbow cast – yet always relevant to the storyline for that episode.
While their musical numbers would be considered twee and cheesy today for a children’s show they were surprisingly well produced and sometimes catchy songs.
I really enjoyed the antics of Rod, Jane and Freddy as a preschooler and I was as much a fan of their spin off show which was set as if on a theatre stage. Somewhere I have conflated a false memory that I went to see them perform at the theatre but that definitely didn’t happen.
Yes at this point it is worth mentioning that Jane had once been in a relationship with Rod she then later had a relationship with Freddy, eventually marrying him a few years ago before he sadly died.
Jane and Freddy, later husband and wife.
Also, just because I love obscure trivia like this I’ll mention that Freddy saved Bill Oddie from drowning off the Seychelles in 1985. Freddy had previously been a lifeguard.
Staying on the theme of trivia, I’m attempting to stick to writing just my memories of things but I like to do a bit of fact checking and I have to admit I had no idea that Rod, Jane and Freddie’s stand alone show had run for so long (starting before I was even born back in 1981).
For me the musical interludes in Rainbow kept my short childhood attention span firmly planted towards the screen and they still remain firmly imbedded in my early childhood memory banks.
The camp pink hippo from Rainbow. In a show without a main female character it was often left to George to fill that role, playing with dolls and so forth. He was the most sensitive of the three puppets living in the Rainbow house.
George was the softer of the three Rainbow puppets. If Zippy was the brash naughty one the George was the complete opposite. Softly spoken, if a little camp He was also probably the most loveable.
Where Bungle always thought he knew best George often came across as being the brighter of the three. He always wanted to do right and do well.
George, fluffy, adorable and pink what’s not to love?
As well as being slightly camp and often preferring the pastimes of those stereotypically seen as girls activities he could also be quite dramatic at times too a real drama queen.
Without George in Rainbow then the whole set up would have been so much different with only Geoffrey to provide a calming alternative voice to events and I always thought that George was the most sensible of all the characters in Rainbow – including Geoffrey (although I was only a toddler and had no business making those kind of judgements at that age).
George wasn’t adverse to sneaking in some product placement long before that was allowed, seen here reading the Rainbow Comic.
George could get into arguments with Zippy although Zippy would usually overpower him and that’s quite impressive seeing as both were voiced by the same person and (not to shatter any childhood illussions) both puppets were attached to one frame.
Although I was an only child I think I might possibly have been quite a bit like George of I’d had other to bounce off of. He was the quite sensible one who just wanted to get on with things.
The most memorable character to come out of Rainbow. Zippy was loud and brash with a zipper along his mouth. It can’t have taken too long to come up with the name.
Rainbow set the ground rules for almost every show that would ever appear on CBeebies. Bright colours, a mix of human and puppet characters. Of those puppet characters some were recognisable anthropomorphic versions of real world toys like Bungle the giant Teddy bear. But others were totally made up and when you write a description down of them they sound bonkers.
Zippy during a dream sequence fantasying about CITV presenter Debbie Shore, yes really.
So to Zippy, he was the made up character. What exactly was Zippy, bright yellow, massive static blue eyes. No nose. Oh yeah and a giant zipper across his mouth of all things. Who knows who came up with that idea but I suspect a frustrated parent with a noisy child.
Zippy was that noisy child on Rainbow. He was the loud mouth who always had something to say and yes he could often be naughty too. Despite having free will he pretty much always was found alongside George (nothing to do with them sharing puppeteers I’m sure).
When it comes to disecting puppet characters from a children’s television show you watched nearly 40 years ago Zippy is the easiest to remember. With his stand out personality and his free will to not always behave as he’d be expected to by geoffry.
Plus he had that zip right across his mouth and yes sometimes it got pulled to shut him up – the one thing as a kid you were really hoping would happen because, well it’s funny.
Zippy, shortly after his zip was zipped shut.
Was it funny though? Poor Zippy not only being born with a zip across his mouth also seemed to be completely incapable of undoing it once pulled meaning all that he could do was lean on his on arm looking sorry for himself.
I have to say, looking back as an adult that Zippy, and all the characters in Rainbow for that matter, didn’t really have much they could do with their faces and yet with a mix of puppeteers skills and great voice work from Roy Skelton, they managed to get the most personality of Zippy.
So much so that Zippy was a cult figure amongst celebrities of the time and around ten years after Rainbow finished he began popping up in adverts and then later making cameo appearances in things like Life on Mars.
When attempts to revive Rainbow were made in the mid-90s both Zippy and George made it through pretty much as they were except they suddenly now had two arms and different voices ruining the whole thing. Not that I watched of course I would have been too old. Not that I’ve watched more recently on YouTube either, honest.
Zippy would have been every kids favourite mainly because he was naughty. I’m sure the adults loved it too because he said exactly what everyone else was thinking.
Ben remembers... 