MARY, MUNGO AND MIDGE ANNUAL (1970)

Mary Mungo and Midge Christmas Annual 1970

Nothing speaks of childhood to me like MARY, MUNGO AND MIDGE. It reminds me of long summer days and dust floating through the air, captured by the sun shining through large school windows onto tiled corridor floors, the smell of carbolic soap and those nice biscuits like Jammy Dodgers or Party Rings that came in colourful tins.

The show, of course, followed the adventures of a girl called Mary, her slightly pompous dog Mungo, and her pet mouse Midge, who played a flute, but who could only really manage Three Blind Mice (which, let's face it, isn't bad for a cartoon mouse). The three of them lived in a modern new tower block in a busy town.  

The show was one of the first children's shows in the UK to reflect busy urban living, as opposed to being set in a wood, forest or other rural setting, and in doing so captured a particular moment in the late sixties, when high-rise suburban living was considered to be the exciting answer to modern housing concerns. You can imagine the sort of plot-lines they'd come up with nowadays. Quite clearly Mary was a latch-key kid whose parents went to work each day, but that never bothered me at the time. Mary was a very capable and sensible young girl.

Each episode would start the same way:

"A town is full of buildings, some tall, some short, some wide and some narrow.

The buildings are flats, and houses and factories and shops. They are built in streets.

The streets have cars, buses and lorries driving along them. Do you live in a town?”

I didn’t, but Mary’s town looked really nice with some fantastic street pans and town views to savour. In each episode, the three of them would descend in the lift from their flat in the tower block on some errand or other, and invariably cheeky little Midge would run off and be a nuisance, and then poor old Mungo would have to rescue him. I think my favourite episode was set in a toy shop where you can just imagine the sort of opportunities there were for Midge to get into all sorts of trouble. After their adventures they would return home, Midge would press the button for the lift back to the correct floor, by standing on Mungo's nose.

How reassuring it all seemed.

The series was created in 1969 by John Ryan, who also created Captain Pugwash. The episodes were narrated by BBC newsreader Richard Baker, with John Ryan's daughter Isabel playing Mary. The theme tune and other music for the series was provided by Johnny Pearson.

Although inescapably part of my childhood there were only 13 episodes made so I must have caught up with their further adventures in the MARY, MUNGO AND MIDGE Christmas annual, well worth 8/6 of anyone’s money.