Growing up in the seventies in Norway meant watching the one tv-channel for the children’s programmes every day. And at some point NRK must have hired some pretty odd people to do the scheduling. The shows I can remember the best include The Clangers (with a narrator speaking new norwegian), and that was the most normal show. Which tells you something. There was also Baltazar, which I’ve never heard of since, which was a cartoon about this mad scientist or wizard or whatever he was. Very Yellow Submarine-ish. Then there was Pernille and Mr Nelson, a puppet show. Mr Nelson spoke Norwegian with a very pronounced American accent and was a mean man. He was always being nasty to Pernille and then all of a sudden something would happen to scare him (“Jeg er redd, jeg, Pernille.”) and he’d look to her to sort it out. Very strange show. And then the perennial favourite: Pompel og Pilt. Also a puppet show it features two odd little characters who keep getting into trouble with the Janitor. The Janitor was very scary. If you sneak up to a 30ish Norwegian and whisper “Reparere, preparere, sabotere” in his/her ear you can watch them go pale. No, really.