They live in your telly, Part 1...

As far as I can tell, TV boils down to love stories or monsters.  Whether the monsters in question be Eastenders style abusive spouses, baby thieving loons, or actual full on fangs-and-clown-makeup baddies, they pretty much define most of the media output over, hmmm, let's take a conservative estimate, about the last hundred years.  And yes, I know TV transmissions only started in the 1920s*.  I was referring to sequential motion narrative in general. 

Thing is, they aren't always that scary.  They aren't what really scares us as children, which is when we meet fear full on; it might even be when we need to be scared the most.  Our fear teaches us stuff, like don't pull the plug by the metal bits or red things in fireplace hurt and Mrs Whitehead does not want to talk about her husband.  

But TV fear doesn't always teach us anything, or if it does, the message has been lost.  So therefore, I give you our first THING THAT LIVES IN THE TELLY, or, to use a TV Trope-ism, Nightmare Fuel.  Never meant to scare you.  Never meant to keep you awake at nights.  Ladies and gentlemen, I give you...

...Bubbles The Clown.

Let me contextualise this for you younger viewers.  In Those Days, TV started around dinner time (Yorkshire dinnertime, might I add, the one in the middle of the day).  Pebble Mill At One, some Watch With Mother (oh, we'll be seeing some of THAT on here soon enough) and then...nothing.

And very often...this.  The girl and the clown.  And all those arcane symbols, so clearly derived from dark Masonic ritual.  The greyscales and the numbers and sometimes music, cheerful, happy music, like that stuff at the end of Dawn of the Dead.  And the Clown.  Oh god.  The Clown.

Here's what some people have said about the Clown:

My sister, who is now 27, has an irrational fear of the Test Card, particularly the clown. She used to have nightmares when she was very young that the clown would jump out of the television and kill her. Even now, if she sees the picture on the screen (this includes the opening credits of It's Only T.V. But I Like It), she asks me to change channels. 
  - Correspondent on BBC News page


It was coming up the stairs.  It had a knife.
 - Personal discussion with this researcher

It waited at the bottom of the stairs
 - Fortean Times Message Board


Yes, I'll bet it did.  They used Bubbles (such is his name) and Carole (such is her name - no really, Carole Hersee) in Life on Mars as a kind of symbol of the unheimlich side of 1970s pop culture.  Everyone knew there was something BAD about that picture.  It was a warning.  Turn the television off now.  Nothing to see here.  Worse yet, the testcard would appear after closedown in the dark hours of the night.  I vividly recall watching Grip of the Strangler on a black and white portable, falling fast asleep, and waking to find myself staring into the cold, happy eyes of Bubbles.  Five minutes later, my sister came home drunk, lost her key and threw a stone at the bedroom window to wake me up.  I may have made quite a noise.

But you know what?  I never minded the two of them.  Carole only looks scary if you are one of the 98% of the population who finds smiling little girls creepy.  Though, there's clearly a Shining thing going on here.  "Come and play noughts and crosses with us...for ever and ever...and ever...or until Play School comes on at 3:55."

But they're OK, these two.  Just a sneaking hint of weirdness dropped into a 70s/80s afternoon or late night, to break the monotony.  Your parents could never explain the test card and no-one ever mentioned it.  It was a smiling, somewhat clowny enigma, wrapped up in a mystery, wrapped up in the tuning card for a 605 line TV.  Nowadays, it has a fan club and websites dedicated to every last detail, and you're not likely to see the thing post 24 hour TV.  I can't help grieving for the loss of all those nightmares.

One final point, however.

I accept no responsibility for the following. 

If you choose to follow this ritual, you are on your own.  If you break your telly, it's your fault.  If you get scared, it's your fault.  If you meet something you wish you hadn't...well, I can always find another reader.


Turn on a digitally equipped TV set.  Select channel 105.
As soon as the page has loaded, press Yellow on your remote.  You have 30 seconds to do this.
Select any other channel. 
Go back to 105.  As soon as it loads, press Green on your remote.
A data page appears.  There are some instructions at the bottom of the screen.  Or just press Green again.

And don't say I didn't warn you.

Pleasant screams, darlings.







* The ones YOU know about, anyway.