Formed at the government’s behest! The Wheare Report of 1950 ordered British film producers to club together to make entertaining-yet-improving films for children, and on 7 June 1951 the non-profit-making CFF was born. Treasures such as Sammy’s Super T-shirt, The Boy Who Turned Yellow, Junket 89, Go Kart Go, Glitterball and One Hour to Zero sprang up in matinees with commendable regularity, alongside serials like The Magnificent Six-and-a-Half, Professor Popper’s Problems and Chico the Rainmaker. Because it employed dozens of tiny production companies, it could stage its own awards, the Chiffies. Despite good stuff like Big Wheels and Sailor and High Rise Donkey still being produced by the start of the ’80s, it couldn’t survive Thatcher’s removal of governmental film subsidies in ’81 (a move which also did for the sex comedy industry). Nevertheless, it’s still going nowadays as the Children’s Film and Television Foundation, although production is not as brisk as it was. Last time we were at Elstree, it appeared to consist of one big bloke in a tiny MDF-partitioned office, smoking like a train. See here for more – rather too many more, in fact – details.