Charley Says: Strangers

I've just been to see Fiddler on the Roof on the West End, and loved it. Sadly, I couldn't find any YouTube videos about the dangers of fiddling on the roof, so I chose this one about a different kind of "fiddling" instead.

Everyone loves Charley Says, don't they? He's the animated cat who appeared in a series of PIFs during the 1970s, warning young children about everything from playing with matches to falling in water. He became so popular that The Prodigy sampled his vocals for their 1991 release Charly - well, the spelling's close enough. A Charley film always showed him larking about with his little human friend Dominic (named after a young neighbour of Kenny Everett, who provided the voice of Charley). Something would go wrong, the day would be saved, and then Charley would growl his way through the moral of the story, which Dominic would translate for the human audience. Such as "Charley says always tell your mummy before you go off somewhere so she knows who you are with."

Or "Charley says never go anywhere with men or ladies you don't know". That's this one, in which young Dom nearly agrees to go with a stranger who offers to show him some puppies. Luckily, Charley's at hand to remind him that this would be a very dangerous thing to do. The bad guy mysteriously vanishes, boy and cat go home where they are rewarded with a nice snack and a pat on the head, Charley delivers the punchline and the PIF ends. Is anyone thinking that this is the least realistic way to warn kids about "stranger danger", ever? I started school nearly twenty years after this was first broadcast, which was 1973 according to the National Archives site, and even then we were always told that a Bad Stranger would either offer us sweets or ask us to look at puppies. Why? You'd think any self respecting paedo could come up with a better way of luring their victims. Or that if a child refused to go with them because the cat said not to, that the kid would be bundled into a car at knifepoint instead.

And if you wanted to look at this one from the stranger's point of view, your search is over. Charley redux!