do you know this man ?

November 9, 2005 3:05 PM

Does anyone remember glen michaels cavalcade ? Is anyone brave enough to email him ? (I'm looking at you , Bonaldi)
posted by sgt.serenity to Society & Culture (21 answers total)

Response by poster: I've been doing a lot of work with my therapist and we've traced the root of many of my issues to the fact that when i was six , i sent glen a card which was never read out on his tv programme , in this thread , i'm hoping to redress that balance somehow and work through my pain.
posted by sgt.serenity at 3:08 PM on November 9, 2005

Paladin the Lamp....The Fantastic Four...Spiderman....
*hugging knees, rocking in corner with baby blue blanket in mouth*
posted by oh pollo! at 3:21 PM on November 9, 2005

Yes: and I've met him. When I was a child he came to our wee Scottish school and did a show (not a TV one) and I was chosen out of the audience to participate in a game, which I won. I can't remember much else (the prize was two plastic tennis bats and a sponge ball), but I have since gone on to a highly successful career, so make of that what you will.

I should point out though that Glen (and his sidekick lighting appliance) has neglected to keep in touch since....
posted by forallmankind at 3:42 PM on November 9, 2005

I wouldn't personally email him - I find him quite foreboding. I'm telling you, behind that smile lurks a Glasgow hard man. One misplaced email and you'll be communicating your childhood traumas to your therapist by blinking your eyes.
posted by oh pollo! at 4:03 PM on November 9, 2005

Haha, last thing I ever thought I'd see here. I watched the program a lot, and went to see Glen Michael live at some town hall when I was a kid. It's a great story in my family that when he was performing some crap trick making a guy disappear from a wardrobe, I could see the stooge sneaking out of the back of the wardrobe and shouted out "He's walking out the back" to everyones, including Glen Michael's, dismay. You can get Cavalcade videos on Amazon IIRC.
posted by fire&wings at 4:17 PM on November 9, 2005

Ask him why he stopped showing casper the friendly ghost
posted by aisforal at 4:35 PM on November 9, 2005

Best answer: You're all writing in English, but I can't understand anything you're saying.
posted by The Monkey at 4:40 PM on November 9, 2005

Response by poster: Well , I'm still waiting for bonaldi to show up in this thread ....i think we're beginning to show a link between having a bit of nurturing from glen and the joyous happy life that springs from that experience and the fugues of agony which many of us 'survivors' of glens dark side , his wilful ignorance of our feeble cards (which we didnt get our relatives to make).
To me , in a certain light , glen michael closely resembles jimmy boyle.
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:48 PM on November 9, 2005

Ohh, please tell me this is a joke.. it's a funny one :)
posted by wackybrit at 5:27 PM on November 9, 2005

What.
posted by basicchannel at 5:32 PM on November 9, 2005

I, like the sgt., didn't get my card read out on Cavalcade. The shame drove me to Canada.

Glen looks younger now than he did in the 1970s. He always had a scary orangey hue, as if he had OD'd on Kia-Ora.

The few people reading this who have an idea about the subject will now have the Cavalcade theme stuck in their heads for weeks.
posted by scruss at 6:13 PM on November 9, 2005

Whoa, I'm here.

And I'm still nursing my grudge that my mum forgot to send in my card to get read out on my birthday while MW, erstwhile bete noir and school brainbox got hers read out that same weekend. Curses!

Then when the roadshow came to town they wouldn't let "young adults" in -- kids only. Double curses!

I do, however, have an Omnibot up the loft, Omnibot being the basis for Glen's Robot Whose Name I've Forgotten. But my hankie with the cartoons inside is all snotty. Sorry about that.
posted by bonaldi at 6:27 PM on November 9, 2005

I'm with The Monkey, but this thread is hilarious.
posted by Tuwa at 6:49 PM on November 9, 2005

nope: too much booze and drugs (or perhaps enough) means that I have no recollection of the theme tune at all - how did it go...?
posted by forallmankind at 8:41 PM on November 9, 2005

"At 10.20am, however, something of a revolution took place. As the rest of the ITV network succumbed to the Christmas Morning Service, STV delighted central Scotland with an hour of Glen Michael's Christmas Cavalcade. Derived from the regular Glen Michael's Cavalcade, this fusty old kid's programme is rightly celebrated by the Scots, featuring Glen (a sort of Casey Kasem via Glendarroch), Rusty (a dog) and Paladin (a lamp) this was stultifyingly awful fodder, built around a mélange of second-rate cartoons (Roger Ramjet, Batfink - you know the score). The regular highlight would be when Glen would stop the cartoon, and appear within the frozen frame himself thanks to the "magic of television". "Watch out Spider-Man!" he'd helpfully holler, "It's the Green Goblin!" before side-stepping out of the picture and allowing the animation to crank up again."

This is why we are the way we are....
posted by forallmankind at 8:53 PM on November 9, 2005

Response by poster: I was thinking about some form of support for those of us who weren't acknowledged by glen (The ones who did get their cards read out will be punished later) we could meet up , bring our cards and read them out to each other ...
posted by sgt.serenity at 12:17 AM on November 10, 2005

An he never read mine neither! I consoled myself with my real friends. It was hard to take because it did seem that he was personally acknowledging everyone else in Scotland. Baisterd!
posted by grahamwell at 2:50 AM on November 10, 2005

Fact: He read my sister's birthday card out and showed a picture of both of us on the swings in Dunfermline.

Fact: That was the first and last time I was on TV.
posted by Jofus at 3:21 AM on November 10, 2005

I remember hating the evil Michael as he ruined the cartoon in question by standing against his blue screen background only to be vision mixed by someone in the bowels of the STV production suite against an episode of Wonder Wheels freeze-framed immediately pre-denouement.

"He's wastin it!" I would cry at the screen.
"I hate him!" my sister would shout.

We were never fans of the erstwhile Mr Michael in my house. I hated Palladin (a talking lamp that lit up as it spoke) with his Ho HO HO vocally treated voice. I hated the kid from Kirkcaldy whose invariably home-made card would feature the ratspawn wean who's birthday it was in question ("Finlay is five today! all the best from Nana and Papa and Bawbag the dog") AND also their equally reprehensible crapfest sibling peering out from some flap under Mickey Mouse's ear.

I hated Glen Michael's crisp linen clothing and cream socks. Who thought that kids would want to watch some old codger with a talking lamp annoyingly interupting cartoons?

The only good thing about Christmas Cavalcade was that we fortunates in Scotland had an alternative to Noel's Christmas presents in those pre-digital days.

Talking of Mr Edmonds, I remember one particularly ill-conceived segment when he went to see a boy in hospital suffering from leukemia. The wee boy looked in a bad state (tube up the nose, the lot) and Edmonds asked him what he would like for Christmas. The wee boy wanted to go on a helicopter. (Handy considering Edmonds owned umpteen of the buggers- no conflict of interest there then). Anyway the wee boy couldnae go in the heli cos he was too sick. So kind-hearted Edmonds decided that he would have the helicopter fly outside the roomwindow while the poor bugger looked on.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 4:23 AM on November 10, 2005

Glen Michael has been seen by over 2 billion viewers?!?
posted by ClanvidHorse at 4:33 AM on November 10, 2005

bonaldi, we all know what Omnibot means in Gaelic ... teehee.
posted by scruss at 8:20 AM on November 10, 2005