Billy Bean and his funny machine does sound great
Billy Bean, and the machine he built, was shown on BBC (where else could it be?) between 1954 and 1956. There are no known copies of it. Therefore it is a treasure to be enjoyed only by the more mature CBF members with good memories. Except ...
... Some weeks ago I was reminiscing with my family about long-gone children's TV programmes. I mentioned the wonderful Billy Bean and his theme song:
"Billy Bean built a machine to see what it would do" at which point my five-year old granddaughter joined in with
"He made it out of sticks and stones ... and nuts and bolts and glue.
The motor sang Chuffaty Bang, Rattata Rattatarator,
And all of a sudden a picture appeared on the funny old cartoonerator Billy Bean built a machine to see what it would do,
It did the funniest things he'd seen,
So he called it his fun machine, machine,
Billy Bean and his fun machine."All but me sat with their mouths open whereas I sagely said "Whaaaatttt?". How the hell did a five-year old know the words to a lost TV programme of more than 60 years ago? "We did it at school granddad". I could extract no more information that might clarify this strange phenomenon. Even stranger than Billy Bean's machine. See below.