When I was growing up in the 1970s, my three main fears were: being blown up by the IRA; being eaten by a Jaws-like great white shark; being vaporised by a nuclear bomb.
I expect it was the same for most kids of my generation. The first two, obviously, were a function of the Birmingham bombings (et al.) and the Peter Benchley/Steven Spielberg axis of shark terror. And the third was the product of the relentless propagandising of CND as rehearsed faithfully on pretty much every BBC programme going from John Craven’s Newsround to The Archers, Animal Magic and Roobarb and Custard.
I don’t actually remember the notorious episode where Hector gets so pissed off with the relentless nagging of Zsazsa and Kiki that he bans them from entering the basement of his eponymous House just as the five-minute warning has been sounded — and all he sees at the end are the skeletons of a cat and a frog glowing radioactively through the closing credits.
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