Asked for favourite entertainment from our childhood, it is all too tempting to cite work that looks impressive from the viewpoint of the adult that we now are. But let’s be honest: what meant a lot to us then? Truthfully, I have to reply that since I was small I have never again experienced the sheer excitement of waiting for a television programme – it was Thursday afternoon at a quarter to four – that I felt at the weekly approach of Rag, Tag and Bobtail on BBC television’s Watch with Mother.

Rag was the hedgehog, Tag was the mouse and Bobtail was the rabbit. They were all boy-creatures and, though inseparable, Rag was my favourite. I loved him. I loved that programme. It was 1954, I was 5, Grandma Parris in Sydenham had a television, and staying with her and watching every week the adventures of three glove-puppet animals was the most tremendous thrill.

Rag, Tag and Bobtail lived outdoors in just the sort of woodland I loved. Under the rhodondendron bushes in Sydenham I tried to replicate their lair and imagine I might meet them there. Their adventures now seem small, but their self-reliance, their little accidents, and the calm, clear, steady and straightforward way that the narrator (a man’s voice, I’m sure) recounted each tale in a single narrative, appealed to a little boy who hated the clinginess and suffocation of infancy.

Child psychologists say that small children like repetition. I loathed it. I detested bouncy, tra-la-la song-and-dance stuff on television and radio, and I didn’t see the point of fantasy. I detested the sheer silliness of children’s programming. I would have hated the Teletubbies with a cold hatred, as I disliked Andy Pandy (he just seemed idiotic and wet) and disliked Bill and Ben the Flowerpot men (why did they talk in silly voices? Why was Weed so whiny?).

But there was something spare and straight, almost artistically severe, about Rag, Tag and Bobtail. I suspect now that it was a low-budget production with a single fixed camera and little opportunity for retakes and editing; but this gave a sense of real time to the story. Rag was living a proper life (not a stupid la-la life, like the Teletubbies) in the woods with his two friends. Each episode featured an incident in their lives.

Bobtail got drenched once, I remember, and covered in mud, and they had to clean him. I don’t know if I realised that these were hand puppets, or noticed how basic and simple the set was, or how we never travelled more than a few feet; but even now I picture those stories as they were filmed – in one sweep, with no fancy camerawork, as though you were stationary and watching it from a few feet away, usually looking up at a ridge or bank on which the three heroes moved, no doubt (I now realise) so that the wrists of the puppeteers never showed.

And it all happened in the countryside. Fifty years later I have chosen to live there, too, and bought a small wood above the house. From my bedroom I look up into the trees, and can almost see the mossy bank where Rag might live, and Tag and Bobtail visit. I still want to join them. I still remember the excitement of rejoining them every Thursday afternoon.

I have seen all kinds of excellent television, man and boy, since then, and often admired and sometimes been engaged by what I’ve seen. But never since Rag, Tag and Bobtail have I ever been, and never will I ever be again, spellbound.

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