Electric Plug/Children and Ponds

I promise I will do Jo and Petunia as soon as I can. Until then, here's one of my very favourite PIFs ever. It used to be available on the now - defunct TV Ark, but you can catch it at http://www.meldrum.co.uk/cgi/play.asp?file=pifs/plug.ra and on the first Charley Says DVD.

Here we have a very 1970s type (check out those sideburns) who is too cheap to buy a plug for his electric drill. Instead, he's decided to wire himself into the mains using match sticks. He gets the shock of his life, literally, when the earth wire slips out and touches the live wire, and as if that wasn't warning enough an equally daft colleague touches him and is thrown across the room by the shock. As the endline tells us: "Electricity can kill. Don't take chances." Thankfully, the stupid are protected from this particular hazard by the fact that appliances now come with plug included, but it's still a good motto to remember. Film Images says it was narrated by Richard Briers, a champion of PIF voiceovers, and starred Nick Brimble as our less - than - bright hero. The DVD case dates the film itself to 1970.

Available from the same site (http://625.uk.com/pifs), and also from the '70s (1978 this time) is this one about "Children and Ponds": http://www.meldrum.co.uk/cgi/play.asp?file=pifs/ponds.ra. It features an adorable little girl of two or three years old frolicking in the garden with her mother. Cheerful music plays and all seems well - until mum's back is turned and the child falls in, using an obvious dummy as the "body" and, for some reason, a shot of her balloon drifting away. The PIF goes on to suggest that you put a fence around the pond and cover it with mesh, or drain it and turn it into a sandpit, because we all want toddlers treading sand about the house. The VO warns "Don't expect children as young as this to keep away from water just because you tell them." Strangely enough, my family once ran a pub with a beer garden that contained a pond, into which no kiddies ever fell; and when I went back there recently, the pond had been drained. Then again, back when this PIF was first shown you ran much less risk of people trying to sue the pants off you, so it was probably a good move.