Don't you trouble, Trouble.

Does anyone remember the early days of British Cable TV when Trouble used to be called The Childrens Channel.

Thought not, nobody remembers cable back then. Our regular TV reception was shockingly poor, so forgive me if I wax lyrical / ramble on about half remembered stuff.

The Childrens Channel was ace and to be fair I was only small when this came out about 7-8 possibly the target demographic. I distinctly remember sitting through such crap like My little Pony and Care Bears to get to the good stuff (Gobots mainly). In fact the best stuff I remember is not the mainstream stuff they had but fucking obscure stuff like, You Can't Do That on Television, Kaboodle (Australian) Tomfoolery (had Groovy Ghoulies), The Barkleys (Dog Sitcom cartoon) and Roustabout with Mick Robertson.

Afternoons was dedicated to Jack in the box, with Playschools Carol Chell as host (If memory serves correct, It Probably wasn't) Kaboodle was part of this as well as another Aussie show that I've long forgotten the name of but was in essence pretty much like Thats Amazing from the Fast Show. They showed you how to make stuff and was presented by two blokes one I'm sure was called Dean. I remember odd bits such as them playing Tip Cat and a fruit that made everything sweet. Though, I think they called it Stevia, it showed a clip of Dean tucking into a Lemon much to the other guy's dismay.

Later they had an old guy with a big mouthed rabbit puppet called Chas. Chas was naughty and had purple hair, sadly thats all I and the Internet know about Chas.

Best of the lot was Stories without words, part of Jack in the Box, with an English and scandinavian intro titles, it was basically a showcase for various Polish and other eastern European cartoons. Beautiful stuff like The Bunny With the Chequered ears, Adventures of Rexy (Rexio), Teddy Dropear, Backyard and the Magic Pencil proves that there was magic in that thar eastern bloc. However the best of the lot are also the most obscure, these are Plasticine animation show, Plastinots, Hen a Pippa, and some cartoon involving alarm clocks ( true and yes I'd dearly love to see them again).

Hen a Pippa was my favourite, a mix of live action and of course a cartoon chicken mixed into the action, only bit I can remember is some folks playing skittles and having the ball switched with an egg, with the totally predictable results of yolk everywhere, nice.

Probably mouldering on some VHS tape back in some Lower Silesian state archives, we've yet to find any info about it on google, and the fact is Stories without words never used the Polish Names for any of the cartoons they showed so we only have their English translations to go on.