Marty Krofft

That was just a snatch from the very scene-setting opening credits to the very first episode of the US series H.R. Pufnstuf, which aired on HTV West on Saturday, 23rd October at 11:25 AM, but it launched in the US two years previously.

It was created by the Canadian siblings Sid and Marty Krofft, who'd just come off Hanna-Barbera's The Banana Splits.

And this was a show very much in that idiom, a garish cartoon transposed into live action with the eponymous Pufnstuf, a dragon, and also mayor of Living Island, a place where 11-year-old Jimmy, played by British Oliver star Jack Wild, and the only human character in this episode, ends up shipwrecked after being lured there, along with his magical talking flute named Freddy by the evil Wilhelmina W. Witchiepoo.

Hmm.

I loved that.

And this was one of the things that people would write in about all the time, uh, kind of saying, "What was that show?" and "Was I the only person to have remembered it?" And it's really, really puzzling because, I mean, from the very beginning, the theme tune is nuts, and i- it goes on for what? A minute, minute and a half, two minutes? And it lays in all this backstory, and it makes you feel like even though we were watching the first episode, you feel like you've missed previous episodes or something because i- it's, it's, it's putting in so much information.

And it's really hard to think, what was the format meeting for this? W- it, um, the Krofft brothers' stock in trade was creating a fantastical cartoony world, and I think they did other shows as well y- where you would have a sort of innocent being deposited on a shore.

But for me, you talk about ...