Bite-sized posts about 7″ singles I own – shameless nostalgia from the days of vinyl.

The Barry Gray Orchestra – Theme from ATV’s Thunderbirds b/w Parker – Well Done (Featuring Lady Penelope)  (Pye Records, 1965)

If I wanted to pretend that even at the age of 7 I was too  cool for school, I would say that the first single I ever bought in 1965, was something by The Stones, The Beatles, The Who or  The Kinks, or perhaps something tasty on Motown.

The reality is that I bought this theme tune from my favourite TV show at the time.

I loved all of Gerry & Silvia Anderson’s ‘Supermarionation’ shows like Captain Scarlet & The Mysterons and Joe 90 but the thirty-two episodes of Thunderbirds shown in 1965-6 were the best.

I think I was persuaded to buy the single because it had a picture of my favourite Thunderbird  (2)  on the cover.

Parker and Lady Penelope

It was performed by Barry Gray and his Orchestra and is sometimes grandly titled March of the Thunderbirds.

The single contains a wonderfully kitsch, part sung but mostly spoken , mini episode on the B-side in which International Rescue (IR)’s glamorous London agent Lady Penelope is given an urgent assignment.

She receives instructions from IR boss (Jeff Tracey) to head off a foreign agent who is making an escape on the M4 after stealing a “small but very vital neutronic stabilizer from Thunderbird 2”.

Lady Penelope is forced  to postpone her planned ride in the country in her pink Rolls Royce.

The Rolls is fitted with James Bond style gadgets. Parker , her  servile and dedicated chauffeur/ butler  (catch phrases “You rang M’Lady? / ‘ome M’Lady? “) assures Lady P he has “lubricated the canon and polished up the gun” .

They set off in pursuit of the nasty foreigner (cue chase music) and the sound of gunfire and a car crashing indicates that their mission has been accomplished.  Best not to ask how the destruction of the car helps in retrieving the stabilizer!

In Thunderbirds, David Graham did the voice for Parker, Brains, Gordon Tracey, Kyrano and various other one-off characters.  He is a simple working man trying to sound posh and dropping and adding his ‘H’s in all the wrong  places – for example “The vehicle in question his just a’ead M’Lady” The accent was apparently based on the voice of a real waiter in Slough.

Sylvia Anderson is the voice of  Lady Penelope, Peter Dyneley plays Jeff Tracey.

For pre-teens, Thunderbirds was as much a key part of the sixties as all the swinging sixties bands. The attempt to update the show with real actors in a 2004 movie was a disaster which even Gerry Anderson judged  “the biggest load of crap I have ever seen in my life”. Plans are being made to re-make the series using current string-free animation but its hard to see how they can recreate the original magic.

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