In a Hartbeat

The news that Tony Hart had died didn’t quite register with me straight away. I was in my room when I heard something on the radio that Tony Hart had passed. At first, I thought I recognised the name but nothing more so I didn’t really register the brief 30 second encapsulation of his life achievements. So I carried on reading my book in peace not bothering to pay the news segment anymore attention. It was only when I turned on to News24 later in the evening and saw Morph that I thought something unusual was happening. Surely I hadn’t discovered a channel dedicated to the 80s. Then, the penny dropped and I realised that it was his creator who had died.

I absolutely adored Hartbeat when I was a young ‘un. I thought Tony Hart’s creations were immense. Whether they were a small painting using watercolours to larger projects where the viewer only sees certain segments in detail and only at the end does the camera zoom out to reveal some breathtaking landscape made from twigs, acorns and paints. It fuelled my curiosity in all things artistic. Teachers at school used to hate me when it came to art because I’d be hell bent on discovering a ‘new’ colour by mixing various paints together and then wasting all the brilliant blues, greens and reds only to produce some putrid quagmire that looked worse than it sounded. Still it was the eagerness of pushing those ‘artistic boundaries’ that I thought every Year 5 needed to make.

And then there was Morph. I was captivated by this little splodge of plastacine that used to cause no end of commotion. Never talking, just moving causing havoc with a few buttons and pens then cruising back to the comfort of home which was a pencil case. What I particular enjoyed was the link between Tony and Morph, how every now and then the camera would cut to Tony who would either tell Morph off or ask him a question. Then it would zoom in on the little plasticine man who would mumble something back that only Tony could understand. I loved it, making it seem almost plausible that Morph did actually exist.

This obviously led an impressionable young boy to try and create his own one. I was unable to convince my mother to buy me Play Doh or even the more authentic plasticine that seemed only to be sold in WHSmiths. So annoyed and digging around I finally found a packet of Blu-Tac and wasted the whole packet making my own FrankenMorph. I used a butter knife to give his head a dome look, screwed up two small pieces of paper into balls for eyes and used a pencil to engrave a smile. The result was a Morph suffering from pneumonia who had perhaps consumed one lead pencil too many . It was a disaster.

Hartbeat really influenced my life when I was a young so I thank you Tony Hart for all the enjoyment and encouragement you and your programme gave me.