Feeling My Age

Rupert Davies as Maigret. BBC publicity shot – from Wikipedia

Our family were late adopters of TV – Dad held out against what he called “the gogglebox” until about 1960. Even then we were a single-channel BBC-only household. He was too frugal – and too highbrow –  to lash out the extra cash for an ITV aerial and tuner.

He only really took to telly with the advent of Maigret that year. It was well written, well acted and above all French in origin – and this more culturally elevating than, say, Steptoe & Son or Z Cars. The series ran for 52 episodes and ended in 1963.

But in fact Dad became an avid fan of Georges Simenon’s “policier” novels, and in his early 80s he was still enjoying them in the original French as his beside reading.

There were plenty of books to get through, too. Simenon was not only phenomenally odd – according to a fascinating appraisal of his life and work by Mark Lawson – but also phenomenally prolific. The 78 full length Maigret novels and 28 short stories were just a fraction of his output.

The great nostlgic power of old TV themes is that once the series ended they were lost forever – if you weren’t alive in the UK between 1960 and 1963 it’s likely this music will mean nothing to you. But it takes me straight back to my late pre-teens in rural Essex.

It was written by Ron Grainer and recorded with Hungarian musicans. Listening to it again for the first time in nearly 50 years I especially love the sharp splanky balalaika thing answering the accordion.