1955: The Lone Ranger

When I was a kid, we had no TV.

Just imagine that: no TV! How did

we live?! Then one day the TV arrived.

Two guys brought it in. It was huge.

Like a wardrobe. It was bigger than them.

They struggled to get it in through the door.

It was massive. Only the screen...was tiny.

It was about as big as a slice of bread.

And it wasn’t colour. Do you know what it was?

No, not black and white. Black and white

hadn’t been invented yet. It was grey and grey.

And you couldn’t really see what was going

on. All that happened was there were smudges

moving across the screen. Some of them were

light grey. Some of them dark grey.

My favourite programme was ‘The Lone Ranger’.

There was a tune that went with it,

‘William Tell’s Overture’. We all learned how to

sing it, going:

daddle an, daddle an

daddle an dan-dan,

daddle an, daddle an

daddle an dan-dan

daddle an daddle an

daddle an dan-dan

daddle aaaaaaan, dan-dan!

The Lone Ranger had a mask.

You could never see his eyes.

We used to make a mask with our fingers

so that we looked like the Lone Ranger.

At the beginning of every programme

a voice said: “A fiery horse with the speed

of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty Hi-Yo Silverrrrrr!’

And a light grey smudge - that was the Lone

Ranger’s white horse - went across the screen.

We all learned how to say: “A fiery horse with the speed

of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty HiYo Silverrrrrr!’

Then in the programme, the Lone Ranger did all

sorts of good deeds but at the very end he would disappear. No sign of him anywhere.

There would just be two people standing there

and one would turn to the other and say,

‘Who was that man?’

And the other would say, ‘That was.....the Lone

Ranger.’

We all learned how to say that. We used to say it to

each other in school.

‘Who was that man?’

‘That was...the Lone Ranger!’

And then the music would come back:

daddle an, daddle an

daddle an dan-dan,

daddle an, daddle an

daddle an dan-dan

daddle an daddle an

daddle an dan-dan

daddle aaaaaaan, dan-dan!


That’s how exciting things were in 1955.