The three-apples-high ambassadors of Smurfland had colonised mainland Europe and the columns of Look-In before they rolled up on your local forecourt. In a marketing masterstroke, National Garages lured in the kids and their harassed Talbot Horizon-driving dads by giving away collectable plastic Smurfs with every tankful of four-star, while Windsor Davies got in on the act by narrating the animated commercials in full-on It ain’t Half Hot Mum mode (‘now, car drill! Smurf yourselves, Smurf yourselves!’) before the indefatigable blue sprites reprised their hit single to proclaim in song: ‘National, the one place on earth, you get service with a Smurf!’ We’re not entirely sure where Father Abraham was in all of this, mind.
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Trad Jazz Britannia
Friday, 21.00, BBC4It always amuses us when we see clips of Double Your Money and notice the category board includes both “jazz (traditional)” and “jazz (modern)”, though it is true that at that point trad really was big news, the nascent Pick of the Pops spinning off from Trad Tavern being just one example of its hold on the nation’s teens in the early sixties, despite it being influenced by music some forty years old at the time.
Are there (m)any National garages still about? Reminds me of the Regent garage that was five minutes’ down the road back in the 70′s.
Most National garages had been rebranded by the mid 1980s, about the last one I remember seeing in 1986 still had Smurf stickers on all the pumps.