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In the TV Times for the week August 11/17 1963 (London region), a brief article on Roberta Leigh appeared on the John Gough Looking Around page (a regular tidbits feature). Here is the feature reproduced in full.


Not Popular With Her

Confession from Roberta Leigh, vivacious creator of Associated-Rediffusion’s Space Patrol, the Thursday puppet series for children: “I think I must have been the only person in the world who prayed that the American space probe to Venus would be a failure.”

The reason - “If the probe had proved there was life on Venus it could probably have predicted what sort of life. And, I mean to say, if we had been told that the Venusians were little pink-spotted men with two heads and four arms then I would have had to have scrapped my own silver-haired Venusian creatures.

“I was certainly relieved when the probe established that life as we know it cannot exist there. After all, as there is so much about life that we don’t know, who is to say whether or not men of Venus exist beneath those impenetrable clouds?”

I gathered the real-life space scientists would have been most unpopular with Roberta if they had forced her to kill off the intriguing Venusians of her imagination!



© 1963 TVTimes & John Gough

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We close on the blazing sun in space before fading to a view of ringed planet Saturn. A gyroscope-like ship, enclosed in a flickering bubble of energy, speeds past us and beyond accompanied by almost musical radiophonic tones. We see it pass the Moon before spinning away to the twilight of the Earth's curved horizon... As we hear a grinding rhythmic electronic score, we see scenes of a futuristic city under a dramatic sky. Some buildings and antennae rotate, light pours from other structures as bullet-shaped and spherical vehicles move rapidly back and forth... 'This is Earth - the year 2100. New York is the headquarters of Space Patrol and men from Earth, Mars and Venus live and work there as guardians of peace. This is the story of those men, whose courage and daring make the universe safe for us all.'
We close on the blazing sun in space before fading to a view of ringed planet Saturn. A gyroscope-like ship, enclosed in a flickering bubble of energy, speeds past us and beyond accompanied by almost musical radiophonic tones. We see it pass the Moon before spinning away to the twilight of the Earth's curved horizon... As we hear a grinding rhythmic electronic score, we see scenes of a futuristic city under a dramatic sky. Some buildings and antennae rotate, light pours from other structures as bullet-shaped and spherical vehicles move rapidly back and forth... 'This is Earth - the year 2100. New York is the headquarters of Space Patrol and men from Earth, Mars and Venus live and work there as guardians of peace. This is the story of those men, whose courage and daring make the universe safe for us all.'
We close on the blazing sun in space before fading to a view of ringed planet Saturn. A gyroscope-like ship, enclosed in a flickering bubble of energy, speeds past us and beyond accompanied by almost musical radiophonic tones. We see it pass the Moon before spinning away to the twilight of the Earth's curved horizon... As we hear a grinding rhythmic electronic score, we see scenes of a futuristic city under a dramatic sky. Some buildings and antennae rotate, light pours from other structures as bullet-shaped and spherical vehicles move rapidly back and forth... 'This is Earth - the year 2100. New York is the headquarters of Space Patrol and men from Earth, Mars and Venus live and work there as guardians of peace. This is the story of those men, whose courage and daring make the universe safe for us all.'