Stop, Hey, What's That Sound?, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grubb! *PHEEEEEEP*

Alright, so either very few of you enjoy lengthy digressions about archaic radio magazine shows, or there's been a collective sigh of post-view-occasioning relief that the previous instalment actually got around to addressing the ostensible 'point' of all of this nonsense, or - and somewhat more likely - Derek Griffiths is still very popular indeed. Whichever of these, or indeed whichever combination of these, was responsible, it gives no small pleasure to report that Here Is A Box is now seemingly through the worst of the 'Cancellation Crisis', and Ian Levine didn't even have to make a substandard disco record about it. Or smash a TV for that matter. We're back in business, and back mistyping 'relief' so many times it has long since ceased to be amusing (though that's hardly likely to prevent it from becoming an increasingly tedious running joke), and what better moment to move on to a subject that will almost certainly increase the viewing figures by several million - Eve Myles T... oh, alright then, Trumpton.

As was promised several millennia ago, in the nearest that this unravelling thematic concept has ever got to anything resembling a cliffhanger, Trumpton was the second instalment in the oft-referenced Gordon Murray-helmed Brian Cant-narrated Freddie Phillips-soundtracked trilogy that later brought forth Chigley. It was also, as you may have worked out already, the one that gave said trilogy its commonly-bestowed name of 'Trumptonshire'. And more also still, if we're going to keep on pushing obscure lexicographic in-jokes that about three people reading this will understand and probably none of them will laugh at (and that's not counting the newly-minted 'more also still'), it should technically be referred to as Popsike Pipedreams. And no, it's still not time to explain just how this so-called 'trilogy' actually consists of four shows just yet. There's some wisecracking spoons, sinister circus employees, Krautrock-soundtracked luddism and unfunny bollocks about milk bottles to get through first. Not to mention Trumpton itself.

Whereas Chigley was more or less a giant industrial park with some toff's private railway running conveniently through it, Trumpton was a bustling residential area complete with an imposing Town Hall and a clock so big it was in danger of being fashioned into a natty 'accessory' by Flavor Flav. While The Mayor, along with his clerk Mr Troop and suspiciously-named chauffeur 'Philby', got on with the administrative slash rosette-awarding side of things, various tradespersons from carpenter to miliner went about their business until, inevitably, running into a problem that would necessitate the intervention of the Trumpton Fire Brigade. Needless to say, due as much to animation-related fiddlyness as any safety-related concerns, this never involved either fire or water, with Captain Flack and his impractically-fringed firemen (Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb) acting as general all-purpose teetering structure-demolishers and retrievers of things from very high places, before retiring to the Trumpton Park bandstand for a daily concert played on brass instruments that sounded suspiciously like varispeeded acoustic guitar.

For 1967 (which, patronisingly-obvious-fact fans, is when it was first shown), this was all very modern and fast-moving stuff indeed, and in a stylistic sense vaguely reflected the 'Swinging London' pop music and fashion of the day. This sociocultural allusion also kind of works for Chigley, whose pastoral-yet-industrial concerns reflected the era when the erstwhile 'Swinging London' popsters got to work on their double-album opuses yet retreated from the capital for the purposes of 'getting it together in the country'. This would technically make Camberwick Green (which we'll come back to - when else? - later) redolent of that lost world of black and white TV and social realism, when light and simplistic pop music provoked girls with beehive hairdos into stamping their heels and shouting "We want to be... Smi-iths Crisps" (actually, that joke would have worked better as "I'm in pieces for Bitza Pizza", except that if anything that's probably even more obscure), which in a way it sort of does, but - as we shall see - there's something more complex and less of-its-time about it which has something vaguely to do with Ewan MacColl turning round a roller caption. And the fourth one doesn't fit into this analysis at all. But more on that - you guessed it - later.

Having been a constantly-rotated favourite for almost a decade by the time that Music From BBC Children's Programmes came out, Trumpton was the proverbial shoo-in for inclusion, taking up the entire seventh track of side one. Once again the compilers reached straight for All The Music From Trumpton And Chigley, but with a greater amount of recognisable 'music' and indeed more instrumental tracks to play with, they came up with a medley that more or less constitutes 'Trumpton's Greatest Hits', especially if you don't count A Trip To Trumpton by Urban Hype. But how did it start, how did it end, and what was in the middle? Come on, you're ahead of us there, surely...

We Are The Biscuit Factory Rappers/Known On The Block As Da Chigley Packaz...

And from The Magic Roundabout and all of its associated not-about-drugs-ery, we move on with an equal lack of linkage with hallucinogen ingestion to one of the other iconic television animations of the 'swinging' sixties. Well, technically, four of the other iconic animations of the 'swinging' sixties, if we're being strictly accurate about it. If ever there was a legitimate rival claimant to Gerry Anderson's rarely-disputed title of Supreme Balding Overlord Of Small-Screen Puppetry That Dominated Sixties Television (And Beyond), it was Gordon Murray, who between 1966 and 1976 was responsible for four - yes, four, you did read that right, and we'll be finding out just that unexpectedly numerically-expanded total was arrived at in due course (and that's where the story starts to get really peculiar) - charming stop-motion serials set in stylised mouthless-puppet-populated sociologically-idealised depicitions of British residential community life. Although one of them wasn't actually made in the 'swinging' sixties. And it wasn't - apparently - set in Britain either, nor even the sixties, 'swinging' or otherwise. But we really are getting ahead of ourselves there. What would Chippy Minton say??

Not much, probably, as he didn't have a mouth. Nor, more to the point, was he actually a resident of Chigley. Well, yes, he did make a guest appearance in more than one episode of it, but again we're getting ahead of ourselves there, even if he wouldn't have much to say about that himself. But he liked his job as a carpenter, and there was nothing he'd rather be, and he'd had his tools for many long years and they were all good friends to him, and a joke about He's Gone by Suede that would take too long to explain, so he probably wouldn't really begrudge us talking about his non-parent series. Not least because there's plenty more to come about his parent series in but a couple of chapters' time.

First broadcast in 1969, Chigley was the third in this none-more-sixties series (which, in an even more obscure joke that would take too long to explain, would technically make it Nightmares In Wonderland, though for very good reasons that will later become very much apparent that title should realistically belong to one of the earlier instalments... but, again, more on that later). Thematically described as being located 'Near Camberwick Green, Trumptonshire', Chigley was a subdivision of the fictional county which was given over to ultra-modernist light industry (a world away from the deceptively nearby ruralist-pluralist backdrop of mills and vintage cars that we'll be delving into in a future instalment), boasting an impressive high-tech biscuit factory and fully functional wharf alongside a smaller pottery business, and all of it overseen by Lord Belborough, the eccentric toff resident of the capacious and opulent Winkstead Hall who owned his own private steam railway and regularly played his barrel organ for the nifty footwork-related edification of the biscuit factory workers (yes, alright, this isn't Don't Scare The Robin Carmody Hare. you know).

For reasons that are not altogether clear, Chigley is the 'forgotten' entry in Gordon Murray's excursions into small-screen utopian cultural harmonia (though not quite as forgotten as the fourth one, and in a nifty bit of postmodernist audience interactivity, see if you can remember the name of it before we actually get to it). Perhaps, though this is pure speculation here, partly due to the fact that it guest-stars a large number of characters from the two earlier series while introducing some slightly less memorable ones of its own (Lord Belborough notwithstanding), and also perhaps partly due to the BBC dropping it from their repeat schedules for a couple of years in the seventies. And yet, ironically, it also boasts one of the most widely-remembered elements of all of the combined series, namely Lord Belborough's jaunty song about how time flies by when he's the driver of a train, riding on the footplate there and back again as he raced to ensure some ingredients got to the biscuit factory in time for them to, erm, make another batch of biscuits. And there's a special prize of Being Completely Ignored for the first person to mention Half Man Half Biscuit's terminally unamusing 'tee hee, they were all on drugs!!' rewrite of it. Trumpton Riots was funny, though.

And yet for some odd reason it isn't that well-remembered effort that forms the Magic Roundabout-accompanying second half of track four of Music From BBC Children's Programmes, but something from elsewhere in the programme. And what's more, it's presented in a fashion that would leave even DJ Kool Herc mouth-agape at the turntable-spinnin' skills on display.