Rails, Rodents and Raspu-Timmy! How a Rat saved a TV station and inspired a generation!

As I write this entry, like all of us, I am currently living under self-isolation conditions due to the very strange and obviously worrying threat of the Coronavirus. With being only able to leave home for essential reasons, it will likely be a fair while before I am able to post a travel-themed blog entry, so instead, I am going write the entry that I have been wanting to post for quite some time!

Those who know me well will likely know that as well as Asperger-related obsessions with railways, astronomy and cricket, all of which began for me at young age, I also have quite an obsession with TV nostalgia. The story I am about to tell is what I consider to be possibly the greatest story for those, like myself, who grew up in the UK in the 1980s. A inter-woven series of developments that occurred during my upbringing would not only see a rat save a flagship TV station, but would also be an inspiration to travel, including learning as to why it is important to take plenty of toothpaste with if you go to Russia!

December 2019 saw the last Inter-City 125, which is being replaced in service by modern Azuma units, travel along the East Coast Mainline after over 40 years of service from Edinburgh to York via Newcastle, where I managed to catch a glimpse of it. The introduction of the Inter-City 125 on Britain’s rail network in 1976 not only helped to revolutionise rail travel on the UK’s mainlines, but also inspired a plan to save a TV station, an even that was not only one of the great stories of the age I grew up in, but one that would also inspire a generation!

In the 1970s, British Rail was a national joke, not only with appalling levels of punctuality but with dated, and largely decrepit, passenger facilities on board trains and in stations. Added to this was competition from the National Express coach service and the fledgling domestic flights service. To try and win back passengers, British Rail’s executives embarked on an advertising campaign inviting advertising firms to pitch their ideas as to how to attract passengers back to the railway. The firm that won the contract was an outsider, ABM, ahead of the more prestigious front-liners Saatchi & Saatchi. When ABM invited British Rail’s executives to visit their head office, as well as finding out how ABM would change the image of what was then ‘butt’ of national jokes, they also found out the passenger’s usual experience of their service.

Arriving at ABM’s head office, British Rail’s executives were asked to sit in a waiting room and the head of ABM would be with them shortly. The waiting room was full of ripped seats, dirty coffee cups and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts. Thinking it would only be for a couple of minutes, British Rail’s executives ended up waiting over quarter-of-an hour and  just when they were thinking about awarding the contract to another bidder and that the whole trip had been a complete waste of time, ABM’s managing director arrived and said to British Rail’s executives: ‘Ladies and Gentlemen, what you have just experienced there is what you passengers are experiencing with your service every day. But if you hire ABM to advertise your services, we’ll change this’. Convinced, British Rail’s executives decided to give ABM the contract and their advertising of the new Inter-City service as The Age of the Train soon brought passengers back to the rail, including business commuters travelling to and from London to work and for meetings, who noticed that the on board experience was much improved, especially the catering.

The former TVAM studio building at Camden Lock, 

designed by Terry Farrell featuring the famous roof-top egg cups

The Age of the Train was not the only transition occurring in a world largely unrecognizable now, as very soon, the UK was to get a serving of television with their cereal and toast at breakfast. In current times of there being so many 24-hour television channels as well as not longer having to be dependent on schedules to watch your favourite shows with catch-up channels available on mobile devices, for many millennials the idea of there being periods where there is nothing on television in perhaps unthinkable. But even as recently as the beginning of the 1980s, there was still no morning television to wake up to. It wasn’t until January 1983 that the UK first had a dose of television in the morning with the launch of BBC’s Breakfast Time, followed by the first commercial television breakfast service, TVAM, which launched on ITV a month later. Presented by the ‘famous five’ of Michael Parkinson, Robert Kee, David Frost, Angela Rippon and Anna Ford, TVAM’s flagship Good Morning Britain was first broadcast on February 1^st 1983, but it didn’t get off to a good start as its ratings were so poor compared to its BBC competitor Breakfast Time.

Roland Rat, saviour of TVAM

Meanwhile, down in the sewers, a young rebellious rat called Roland saw directly where TVAM’s ratings were heading – down the toilet! Roland then had a knock on his rat hole door from a young gerbil called Kevin who had just arrived in London from Leeds on the Inter-City 125 and was looking for a place to stay. Kevin told Roland as to how he felt the Inter City 125 was so good that he felt he had to find out more about it. On his Inter-City journey, Kevin struck up a conversation with an important-looking executive gentleman, who happened to be the Chairman of British Rail Sir Peter Parker. Sir Peter told Kevin the ABM advertising story as to how they procured the advertising contract for British Rail.

Roland told Kevin about how the sewers were getting flooded by TVAM’s ratings going down the toilet and he had been trying to think of ways to save the station. Kevin the remembered his conversation with Sir Peter and told Roland the ABM story and Roland said: ‘Will if it can work on British Rail’s executives, then why can’t it work on TVAM’s executives?' So Roland called TVAM’s chief executive Bruce Gyngell to tell him he had an idea as to how to improve his show’s ratings and invited him and his executives to come down to Roland’s rat hole. 

When TVAM's executives came to Roland's Rat Hole, Roland's father Freddie answered the door and asked them to wait in a room and you would be with them in a few minutes where there happened to be five boring people talking about really boring things. And then after about ten minutes or so, when the TVAM bosses were about to leave because they were so bored, but then, all of a sudden, the five boring people unmasked themselves as Glenys the Guinea Pig, Errol the Hamster, Reggie Mouse, Kevin the Gerbil and Roland Rat Superstar himself. And then Roland said to the TVAM executives: 'What you have just experienced there is what your viewers are experiencing every morning, so here's the deal, you give me and my friends our own show on your station, we'll change it from completely dull to utterly brilliant!' Convinced, Mr Gyngell took the gamble and when Roland’s show Rat on the Road launched, the UK’s kids, including myself started setting their alarms to get up in time to see Roland Rat and Kevin the Gerbil’s latest adventure chugging about in Roland’s pink Ford Anglia. The more kids watched the show before school, their parents started watching TVAM and the ratings shot up, and in Roland’s words: 'The rest they say, is history!'

The Utterly Brilliant His Wackiness Timmy Mallett

presenting Wacaday

After rescuing TVAM, Roland and his rodent pals set off for pastures new at the BBC, which left a void that needed filling. Enter the Utterly Brilliant His Wackiness Timmy Mallett with the show your telly was made for - WACADAY! One of my biggest childhood heroes, Mr Mallett’s show took kids to places as far and wide as Australia, the US, Thailand, South Africa, Egypt and more during school holidays. Combining the art of wackiness with learning, including explaining world history and major world events that occurred during the Wacaday generation's upbringing such as the end of Apartheid in South Africa and the fall of Berlin Wall, which he knocked down with his giant foam mallett!

Remembering to take my toothpaste to Russia!

Most memorably for me though, and what would become one of my most memorable experiences when travelling was finding out why it’s especially important to take plenty of toothpaste when you visit Russia – to fight off the invading Tartars! When visiting St Petersburg in 2015, through the present-day convenience of social media, I Tweeted a picture of myself at the Winter Palace with a tube of toothpaste reminding me of why I needed it and the Utterly Brilliant His Wackiness himself replied: ‘Watch out for the Gremlin in the Kremlin and Raspu-Timmy!’, which reminded me also who was responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union!

TVAM lost its licence to broadcast to the nation at breakfast to GMTV in 1992, after which I gradually had to say goodbye to childhood, starting my GCSE courses in the same year. However, the spirit of Wacaday lives on with the generation whom it entertained who enjoyed playing Mallett’s Mallett with cushions and pillows and looking at each other and going BLEAUGH!!!! Indeed, in such difficult and unprecedented times for humanity, maintaining the spirit of Rat on the Road and Wacaday could never be more important. So in the meantime, stay safe, stay ‘Utterly Brilliant’ despite the circumstances, and we’ll get through this together.

The Utterly Brilliant His Wackiness’ autobiography, ‘Utterly Brilliant’, featuring his paintings from his cycling trip along Spain’s Camino Santiago route as well as his time at presenting Wacaday can be checked out at https://timmymallett.co.uk/timmy-shop/