My wife Maria said: “You know, Andy Pandy would never get away with it today.”

We were reminiscing about children’s television programmes and, I have to admit, I always thought it was funny peculiar that Andy Pandy, Loobyloo and Ted all lived together in that one picnic hamper.

If a new version is ever produced, the makers may have to provide them with separate accommodation to stay within the rules of propriety.

Well, you know how people talk.

They knew how to make children’s series back then: they recorded 26 episodes of Andy Pandy and repeated them non-stop from 1952 to 1970 on the principal of waste not, want not.

The 1950s also produced Bill and Ben. These were the rapscallions whose language, Oddle Poddle, was criticised because it was so popular amongst children that educationists thought it might affect the use of proper English in schools.

Flobadob, to them, said the kids.

It was the era of Billy Bunter, a series that made fun of the fat lad at school, and Noddy, whose chums included Big Ears and Mr Plod the Policeman, both names which now seem a little insensitive to people with big ears and officers of the law. In those early days, the Enid Blyton version of Toytown also had a racial issue which was only resolved in the 1980s.

As we progressed into the 1960s and 1970s, we had The Clangers, that featured the Soup Dragon and the Iron Chicken, and the esoteric Magic Roundabout with Ermintrude the Cow, Dylan the hippie rabbit and Zebedee. It made you wonder what substances the writers might have been taking.

They were, of course, all perfectly innocent programmes and reflected a more innocent period when people still recognised the village life portrayed in the wonderfully named Trumpton, Camberwick Green and Chigley; fictional places that even now have their own websites.

Go on. Can you still name the Trumpton firemen?

In later years, Captain Pugwash had malicious gossip spread about his crew which was all untrue: none of the crew had double entendre names.

This was an age when Morecambe and Wise debated whether or not they could legitimately share a double bed, until it was pointed out that those comedy greats Laurel and Hardy had shared one without censure.

Eric agreed: “If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for us.”

However, he did insist on smoking his pipe in bed to assert his masculinity.

Two blokes sharing a bed in a comedy today? They wouldn’t get away with it, would they?

(The Trumpton firemen were: Pugh, Pugh (twins), Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub.