Play Safe - Kites and Planes

One of a trio of ‘Play Safe’ public information fillers made by the Central Office of Information, this film was designed to convey the message that electricity doesn’t necessarily need a metal conductor to pose a danger - a wet kite string can be just as effective, at least in terms of being potentially fatal. Just as a professional pilot needs to survey the area before take-off, so must the amateur kite or model-plane hobbyist - the comparison presumably intending to flatter the latter groups.

The narrator is the actor Brian Wilde (1927-2008), who at the time was at the height of his fame as Foggy, one of the lead characters in the long-running Last of the Summer Wine (1973-2010), and Mr Barrowclough, the kindlier of the prison officers in Porridge (1974-77) - this last performance combining authority and avuncularity in a way that carries over into his narration here. In the 11-minute version of Play Safe, Wilde voices the mature and responsible owl, opposite Bernard Cribbins’ excitably hotheaded robin, a double act of what would have been two extremely familiar voices.