The other week I was tidying one of my shelves and a white pile of dust landed on my head and with it was this:
He used to appear on Going Live and Children's BBC with Philip Schofield and his significance to me was I bought him as a hand puppet in Elvaston Country Park, Derbyshire in the English East Midlands together with some other outfits.
I was with with my family and I came skipping across the fields jumping up and down with Gordon all excited in this public place with lots and lots of grown ups!
Can you believe it!!! I even carried him back all the way on the bus cos I couldn't bear to be removed from him and oddly enough nobody said anything.
I think this would of been the first time I'd acted as an adult little boy publicly although at the time I don't know it!
During the decade I crossed from being a teenage child to be an adult but still very much that child many of the constants was children's tv specifically Children's BBC as it was then transmitted mainly on BBC1.
Things had moved from having a simple graphic image up with the continuity announcing saying "and now at Twenty to Five it's time for Blue Peter" to having a live show that did all of that with interactions that was referred to as the BBC Broom Cupboard and the first to front that was Philip Schofield.
Being children's tv you'd have drawings, competitions but something that it starred was a talking puppet.
Gordon the Gopher became almost as much as star of the show as Philip adding his comments, interviewing people and so on until Andy Crane took over and brought in Edd the Duck in 1989.
Gordon wasn't out of a job then, he moved with Philip to the must see Saturday Morning show Going Live.
Gophermania was rife and this is actually my Gopher I bought back then carrying him in my arms who had a squeaker so he cold "talk" although naturally you could use ventriloquism too to make him speak.
I still have him.
That was Gordon in a jacket designed by Adam Ant in 1990.
