First TV programme memory

The very first thing I watched was a Cup Final in the 1950s. My parents had friends who owned an electrical shop and they were the first people we knew to have a set. It was black and white with a nine-inch screen. They had their sitting room arranged like a cinema and there must have been about thirty or forty people crammed in. Being little I was allowed to sit at the front. I don't think I was very interested in the match, but I remember the whole experience being incredibly exciting! (Oh we knew how to enjoy ourselves in those days! )
The next programme I watched was the Coronation. My father was a teacher and I went to his school and watched it there with the other children. My mum had made me a lovely red and white gingham dress with royal blue hand-smocking specially for the occasion.
Soon after this my father won a TV and a reporter/photographer came to the house to write an article for the Competitors' Journal, the newspaper which ran the competition. I still have a copy of this, with a picture of me holding a knob pretending to turn it on! We seemed to spend ages fiddling with it to get a good picture... Anybody remember 'horizontal hold' and 'vertical hold' controls which had to be very carefully adjusted? By the time you'd sorted out the picture you'd missed half of the programme!

Shortly after GeorgeVI's funeral, TV came to Scotland with the opening if the Kirk o' Shotts transmitter. The first evening there was a programme of Scottish culture - singing and dancing. I remember the Coronation the following year when we had a lot of friends and relatives to watch it in our house- on a screen smaller than my laptop!

My first memory is watching Prudence Kitten on my grandparents' television. It must have been in the very early 50s certainly before the coronation.

Muffing the mule and Andy Pandy also the Woodentops. No idea how old I was.

Muffin!

We never had a TV until after I was married and by the time I got in from work I was usually too tired to watch it.

Some time after I saw the Coronation I was fascinated by a performance of Swan Lake on a relative's small set. My parents didn't get a tv until 1960. By then I was teaching and living in a flat in London.
A kind older teacher invited two of us to her home each week to watch Z Cars! She also fed us well and her Polish husband provided vodka and drove us home in their sports car. They had no children but adored Sammy, a lovely Afghan hound whose exploits she often related to our pupils in assemblies.
This was in SE London and the children enthusiastically told us about a new programme which seemed to be called Carnation Street and someone named Ena!

I remember we had to sit in the dark, or draw the curtains if it wasn’t dark

I remember watching the coronation on my uncles television I think it was a 9 inch screen, and my sister and I had to sit quietly through the whole thing. No offence intended but we were bored rigid.

I remember all the Watch with Mother programmes, and I think I know which day of the week they were on. I liked Bill & Ben (Wed) the best and Picture Book(Mon) the least.
My little sister was frightened of Torchy the Battery Boy.
I don't really remember Muffin the Mule or Prudence Kitten, but I still have a stuffed toy kitten called Prudence, so I expect that's where the name came from. Funny how some things stick in the memory and others don't

Does anyone remember Old Mother Riley I think her daughter was called Kitty and in actual fact they were husband and wife. I only have a vague recollection but what I do remember I remember with great affection.

Greyduster, I do remember the Groves (I believe it was one of Christopher Beeny's first parts, he was a young boy in it),also the Appleyards. We're enjoying some of the 70s programmes on Drama, ie The Duchess of Duke Street and The Onedin Line. Although dated they're still quite enjoyable and we don't remember any of the story lines although we watched them originally.

Listen with Mother, Dixon of Dock Green and I remember a programme called the Bumblies, think that’s what it was called, with Michael Bentine.

Watch with Mother. Picture book on a Monday, Andy Pandy on a Tuesday, Bill and Ben on a Wednesday, Rag Tag and Bobtail on a Thursday, and The Woodentops on a Friday. This was my favourite with "the very biggest spotty dog you ever did see". Later Champion the Wonder Horse, Lassie, and Bonanza. As a teenager Dixon of Dock Green and Emergency Ward 10.

Another favourite was Animal Magic with Johnny Morris as a zoo keeper. He had a wonderful range of voices for each animal!

That was one of my favourites. I found it hilarious. I still really enjoy programmes like 'Monkey Life'.

I was about 10 in the 1940s and went to visit my uncle near London. He took us to see a neighbour who had a TV and we saw a play, I was fascinated but can't remember what it was about. Neither I nor my father had seen TV as it hadn't reached the Midlands at that time.

Jennifer and the flower fairies. I also had the book by Annette Mills, the same Muffin the Mule and Prudence kitten author.

I remember “The Black Tulip” it was a children’s play/series

What was the one with Bernard Cribbing ??

I loved most of the Watch with Mother programmes but I remember thinking Picture Book was boring. I remember watching something with my mother (just got the tv and all the others were at school, so just me & mum), there were lots of women doing physical exercises, very strange.

Does anyone remember a serial called “The Prince and the Pauper” that was on in the mid fifties? I was absolutely hooked on it and even now I can remember the theme music to it. I don’t think there was anyone in it that we would remember now, but there was a remake of it in the seventies that had a young Nicholas Lyndhurst in it. I think it was based on a Mark Twain novel.

I remember watching it. And a bit of Googling found this page, referring to one episode in September 1955

genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/cc0e5bf1a6a2431e9f77e8d0315e464b

I don't recognise any of the names, but they seem to have used a pair of twins for the boys

Oh I remember watching that.
We got a TV in 1953, my mum always said it was for the coronation, but really it was because my dad wanted to watch Stanley Matthews in the cup final. Both events meant our house was stuffed to the rafters with relatives. I was given a ball and some toffees with the coronation date etc on them. I went to play with the ball in our back porch because it was raining and I was so bored.

We had a TV very early because my parents were crazy about tennis and wouldn't miss a stroke of any Wimbledon match. I was plonked in front of the TV to watch "Watch with Mother" presumably whilst my mother cooked dinner or did something with my (then) baby sister. This must have been 1957-1958 as I remember sitting in the front room watching it in a house we moved away from in summer 1959.

Mondays was Andy Pandy
Tuesdays was Picture Book
Wednesdays was Bill and Ben
Thursdays was Rag, tag and Bobtail
Fridays was the Woodentops.

Sometimes if I started watching a bit early there were kittens playing with a ball of wool before the programme started.

At least, I think that's right - I was only three at the time!