How!

More childhood TV memories - this time it's How, one of Southern Television's most popular and long-running programmes.  A children's TV series of a kind they no longer seem to make, How was 'must watch' viewing for me as a kid- one of the few ITV programmes I watched rtegularly, in fact.  Running from 1966 until 1981, it was notable for beinging together two of Southern's stalwarts: Jack Hargreaves and Fred Dineage, who appeared in most episodes.  In fact, the presenting line-up stayed pretty stable for the programme's run.  The demonstrations to illustrate the solutions to the various 'how' questions posed always fascinated me and, I have to say, I found Hargreaves far less avuncular and far more interesting here than he ever was on Out of Town.

There was even a tie-in book, published in either the late sixties or early seventies - The Daily Mail Book of How - which offered more explanations to various questions of 'how' and illustrated how you could do such things as turning unwanted vinyl records into bowls by heatiing them up so they became malleable enough to mould.  In common with, I suspect, every other child in the UK I was never allowed to test out any of these supposedly practical solutions, as they were deemed too dangerous.  I wasn't even allowed to test out the solution to 'How Can You Tear a Telephone Directory in Half' because a) my father unreasonably wanted to use the Yellow Pages and b) because it involved baking the directory in the oven, which my mother was convinced would result in the house burning down.  Sadly, I lost or misplaced the book many years ago.  Perhaps I should try and track a copy down and try out some of the stuff in it...