Your (or rather your parents) first colour telly.

Do you remember the arrival of your first family colour telly? If you're as ancient as I then you will remember the days when all telly was black-and-white. Then one day ...
I remember the arrival of the very first colour telly into our home when I was a kid. It must've been 1973/74. One of my friends at (primary) school already had a colour TV at her house, and I can remember quizzing her endlessly about the colours used in 'Lost in Space', for example: 'what colour is the robot', 'what colour does the robot's chest light up when he speaks?', 'are the robot's tracks black or some dark colour?' 'is the Jupiter 2 the same colour as the robot's torso?', 'what colour are Dr Smith's trousers?', ... I'm sure you get the picture.
Then, one day, my parents went off to Rumbelows (local perveyor of all things electrical). Being a young'n I didn't follow what was happening, but the next saturday I was told that a <fanfare> colour TV was to be delivered that very day. Oh the excitement! Fairly late in the afternoon a Rrumbelows delivery truck stopped outside our house, and two burly chaps carried and extremely large and heavy TV in to out house. There was a bit of fiddling and tuning by the accompanying technician, and the old B&W telly was taken back to Rumbelows (we tended to rent TVs in those days).
And there it was, the brand new, enormous, 21" screen Ferguson colour telly, all installed and ready to go. First thing we noticed was that there was no tuning dial - instead there were eight press buttons, one for BBC1, another for BBC2, a third for ITV, and five more for ... spares I suppose. So the TV was switched-on, and being saturday afternoon, the BBC1 button was pressed - CER-CHUNK - and after about 30 seconds to warm up (a new telly warms-up very quickly) a colour picture appeared, and it was a Disney Donald Duck cartoon. What a great introduction to colour telly a cartoon is - very bright and, well, colourful. Best of all though was that the next show was Dr Who (Jon Pertwee, but I don't remember the story), and I was into Dr Who even more than I was Lost in Space. I'm sure I don't need to tell you how we marvelled over the opening sequence - that psychedelic 'howl-around' visual almost made me fall over. Although being very excited about the arrival of the new TV, I had also been anxious about it because there was a strong possibility that it would be delivered during the Dr Who broadcast - there being no VCRs in those days! As you have discovered, everything worked out perfectly. In fact, I think the delivery guys wanted to get back in time for Dr Who themselves.
After this, my next colour TV revelation came when I saw Star Trek - I had no idea that the uniforms were colour-coded, and that bright red barrier that ran around the bridge. For those of you who are interested, the actual episode was the one in which Kirk has to fight the Gorn (which is a bloke with a rubber crocodile head), so not one of the best but all that colour more than made up for the plot.
Well, I've shown you mine, now let's have a look at yours. What do you remember about you first exposure to colour TV?

I think it was about 1973 ! It hage huugggee buttons you pressed for the channels . I can recall the wooden surround and I'm pretty certain the make was D-E-R (must have gone bust)
The reason this sticks in my memory is that my dad and his pals watched the 1973 FA cup at ours in glorious technicolour ! 

alls i remember was our black and white,and colour tv,s with long press in buttons,well before remote controls.
screw in legs at the bottom as i recall.
in the late 70,s and 80,s we had atv were you put a 50p in the back,bit of a pain when you was half way through watching something and the 50 went.

Our first colour telly was bought back in September 1983 after I began primary school.  It was a Sony Trinitron complete with a silver remote control that had narrow rubber buttons.  My earliest memory was of the BBC1 logo in all its whirling blue and yellow glory.  I loved that reflection you got with it.  Old, but stylish.  I remember watching adverts for Minder and The Sweeney, two Dennis Waterman programmes that were being screened at the same time on ITV, but the best memories are of watching Children's BBC (before the Pip Schofield era) and CITV.  Scooby Doo, CB-TV (featuring funnymen Jim Sweeney and Steve Steen), Dramarama, The Red-Handed Gang, Penelope Pitstop ('I'll get you, Penelope Pitstop!'), Dick Dastardly, Wacky Races, Dungeons & Dragons, Spiderman And His Amazing Friends, Danger Mouse, Take Hart, Murphy's Mob and Grange Hill.  The list was endless.  Oh, and let's not forget Alfie Atkins and Marmalade Atkins (no relation).  There was also Spider-Woman which was on ITV.  Her red outfit looked amazing!
Action shows like The A-Team, Knight Rider (which first came on when we still had black & white TV), Airwolf, Automan and The Man From UNCLE (I know, a Sixties relic) were always great to watch, as well as the James Bond films.
Before our Sony which we relegated to our parents' bedroom in '95, it was a Ferguson B&W special we had to make do with.  My dad got it in '79 and our favourites on it were stuff like Dallas, The Incredible Hulk, Into The Labyrinth, Match Of The Day, Little House On The Prairie and Stig Of The Dump.

My parents rented our telly so we just swapped the Black and White one for a colour.
 
When I was first mariied we didn't have a colour Telly, but were given a Black and White one. The TV licencing people kept writing to me asking why I didn't have a colour licence and pointing out it was illegal to watch colour TV with only a B&W one. They just didn't believe we only had B&W.

That's a bummer, gene.  They should have gone straight to your house to see you had a B&W telly.  Morons!
 
I think the Ferguson telly was the first one my dad ever bought, mainly because he could afford it.  By 1983, we'd moved into our first house and we were a bit more loaded, so he got us a colour TV.  For a while, we could get S4C.  They occasionally showed stuff like The Six Million Dollar Man and The Hulk which had previously been ITV's property, but it was still neat that the Welsh Channel 4 showed them when no one else would.
 
Things got better when we bought a Panasonic video in '88.
 
 

The number of stories I hear of the TV Licencing people not believing you don't own a telly. They've even taken some to court only to have it thrown out because they have not physically checked to verify the persons claim. When my friends first got married they didn't get a telly until at least 6 months after they moved into their first home. They wre hounded by the TV licence dept, who refused to believe them. I mean why would you want a Telly when you're just married

Talking of Televisions..... Blonde and a Television joke time
A blonde walks into a store. She finds a great TV and goes up to the clerk.
"Sir, I'd like to buy that TV over there."
"Sorry, we don't sell those to blondes."
What? she thought.
So, she dyes her hair red and goes back again.
"Sir, I'd like to buy that TV over there."
"I'm sorry, we don't sell those to blondes."
Uggh! This was really getting on her nerves!
So, *sigh* she dyes her hair brown and goes back AGAIN.
"Sir...I'd really like to buy that TV over there."
"...I'm sorry...we don't sell those to blondes."
"AHHHH! HOW DID YOU KNOW I'M A BLONDE?!!!!"
"Well...because that's a microwave...not a uh-"TV"."

 
Ill get my coat

Talking of Televisions..... Blonde and a Television joke time[image]A blonde walks into a store. She finds a great TV and goes up to the clerk."Sir, I'd like to buy that TV over there.""Sorry, we don't sell those to blondes."What? she thought.So, she dyes her hair red and goes back again."Sir, I'd like to buy that TV over there.""I'm sorry, we don't sell those to blondes."Uggh! This was really getting on her nerves!So, *sigh* she dyes her hair brown and goes back AGAIN."Sir...I'd really like to buy that TV over there.""...I'm sorry...we don't sell those to blondes.""AHHHH! HOW DID YOU KNOW I'M A BLONDE?!!!!""Well...because that's a microwave...not a uh-"TV"."
 Ill get my coat[image]

-action-burt1

I'll help you on with it