It's home time
It's a sign of getting old when all the institutions you once held sacred gradually start to disappear.
It all started with Rainbow and Play school (may Big Ted rest in peace) being pulled from our screens.
More recently we've lost Top of the Pops, Wispa bars and Um Bongo.
But today will see the last meaningful vestige of the eighties finally put to bed as Grange Hill, that one-time staple of playground conversation, airs its final episode.
No more Tucker Jenkins, Gripper Stebson, Mrs McClusky, Mr Bronson, Zammo, Roland, Gonch, Ziggy Greaves, Pogo Patterson, Ronnie Birtles or Danny Kendal.
The programme that first burst onto our screens like an agressively-thrusted sausage during lunch break, in 1978, has been axed because 'it no longer reflects modern children's lives'.
For the record, my personal favourite memories have to be Zammo Maguire's dramatic battle with drug addiction (Just Say No! and all that) and Roland Browning's selfless campaigning to raise funds for the terminally ill Danny Kendal.
More recently, the programme has become a bit wishy washy - not much in the way of bullying, classroom violence or anything that would vaguely make a kid scared of going to 'big school'
So, as the final school bell rings and the bike sheds are locked up for the last time, spare a moment to ponder a childhood forgotten, a rose-tinted TV world that has since been swamped by multi-channel madness. There's nothing Tucker can do to save the day this time...
Grange Hill RIP.
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