An Everyday Story of the Hero Next Door
Fireman Sam Saves the Day! The Musical
Sadler’s Wells Theatre, 1995
As far as the Sadler’s Wells Theatre is concerned, Fireman Sam is almost literally the hero next door. He began his climb up the ladder to success just down the road in Clerkenwell Fire Station, the protégé of two serving officers – Dave Jones and Dave Gingell.
For some years the two Daves had been running a small business dealing in fire service memorabilia. Then, following the urban riots of the 80s when the emergency services were among those who came under physical attack, they felt the need to get the public back on their side.
Among the mugs and badges and model fire engines they used to sell was a friendly bendy rubber fireman called Sam. Although he looked rather different in those days, he already seemed to project the right kind of image – honest, brave and true. An ordinary guy with out of the ordinary qualities.
But finding the character was only half the story. How to promote his in a market that was already stuffed to breaking point with model figures – if not role-model figures? Here is where the two Daves had a stroke of luck. Their original idea had been to commission a series of simple colouring books featuring Sam, but then one night Dave Jones happened to tune in to a radio programme and heard the voice of Mike Young, creator of SuperTed. Dave first wrote to Mike, then introduced Mike to Sam and the other Dave, and finally mike introduced them all to Rob Lee. From this point on, Sam really took off.
As Dave Gingell is the first to admit, “Rob is the creative one.” A Cardiff-based commercial artist, Rob Lee had worked on SuperTed, and in 1984 he it was who took the idea of Fireman Sam and set him down on paper in the form we recognise today. And not just Sam. Rob Lee also created a whole population of characters to inhabit the Pontypandy community, drew their portraits, and wrote the stories for the TV series that have been chronicling Sam’s adventures ever since.
John Alderton was the team’s first choice to provide the voice-overs, and happily for all concerned, they never needed to come up with a second. Sam is now a star in thirty countries, while a new TV series is currently in development in the USA where Sam has quickly established himself as a firm favourite. Back on his home turf, Fireman Sam books and goods continue to do a roaring trade, the BBC is repeating the 34 episodes already made using ground-breaking animation techniques, while Sam himself continues to tour fire stations throughout the country, promoting fire safety and holding up the good name of the service.
He’s come a long way to Rosebery Avenue, has Fireman Sam, but he does such a good job, who would begrudge him his popularity? It’s taken hard work and a little bit of luck but fame, once sought, can sometimes spread like wildfire. As the lad from Pontypandy himself might say, “It only takes a little spark…”
FIRE FACTS
Where did the first fire come from?
Depending on who you ask, there are lots of different answers:
The Scandinavians believed fire appeared when Thor the god of thunder hit a rock with his hammer and made a shower of sparks.
The native Americans believed in a ghostly buffalo which charged out of the spirit world across the plains, kicking up sparks from its hoofs.
The Hindus had a similar belief about the horses which pulled the sun across the sky.
An ancient Greek myth says that the god Zeus (the same god the Romans called Jupiter) wanted to destroy man by taking fire away from him. But a Titan called Prometheus stole fire from Zeus’s home on Mount Olympus and carried it back to earth so mankind would be saved.
Whichever story you believe, fire is a powerful and mysterious force which can both comfort and create as well as burn and destroy. It is hardly surprising that so many ancient civilisations used to worship it. The Romans even had a special building called the Temple of Vesta where a sacred flame was kept burning day and night be a group of priestesses. If the flame ever went out, they believed, it would bring disaster on the city.
What is fire?
Fire is simply the heat and light produced when oxygen quickly joins together with another substance in a chemical reaction. Without oxygen in the air around us, nothing would burn, and there has to be enough oxygen to keep the fire going once it’s started. When the reaction happens very quickly indeed, you get an explosion. Then, all the gases that were held inside the substance suddenly expand to fill a much bigger space than they did before they were burnt. As well as being noisy this can be very dangerous!
Will anything burn?
Almost anything will burn if it can be made hot enough. And not just solid things like coal or wood – even liquids can burn. Oil lamps used to work by burning oil, and petrol nowadays drives our cars. Even a gas can burn – the natural gas piped in from the North Sea to our cookers and stoves burns at around 2,000ºC. (Compare this to the boiling point of water, 100 ºC, and you will see how important it is to be extra careful whenever you’re in the kitchen.)
Do things always burn at the same temperature?
N. Things like dry wood or petrol have a low kindling point, which means they will catch fire fairly easily. But solid fuels like coal or soke need to be heated to far higher temperatures before they will ignite. On the other hand, phosphorus has such a low kindling point that it has to be kept under water as it would catch fire in the open air, and there is even a substance called sodium, that can burst into flames under water!
How did people make fire before they had matches?
They used various methods. One way was to rub two sticks together until they got so hot, they began to burn. Or a single stick with one of its ends placed upright in a hole in a block of wood could be spun very rapidly between the hands to cause the same result.
You can also make a spark by hitting a piece of steel with a hard rock called a flint. As long as there is plenty of air to help the tinder burn (tinder can be anything with a low kindling point, like wood shavings, cotton or sawdust), then the fire will grow. You can always make the flames bigger by gentle blowing or fanning. Later on, things called bellows were invented to help increase the flow of air to the heart of the fire.
Where does smoke come from?
Smoke is the unburnt part of the fuel substance which escapes when there is not enough air to burn it all up. In chimneys it gathers as a thick black dust called soot. In car engines, the unburnt part of the petrol which comes out of the exhaust pipe is called carbon monoxide, and too much of it in the atmosphere can be very bad for living things because it is the very opposite of the oxygen we need to breathe to keep us alive. That’s why scientists today are trying to develop ‘cleaner’ fuels which will burn away more efficiently with less harmful waste left over.
Who invented fireworks?
Many centuries ago the Chinese discovered that by setting fire to a combination of saltpetre, sulphur and charcoal they could make an explosive dust called gunpowder. While this was a dreadfully destructive weapon in times of war, it could also be used to produce beautiful and exciting firework displays. They packed gunpowder into a hollow tube, sealed on end, and lite the other. The resulting explosion could only escape out of the open end, forcing the firework to shoot off in the opposite direction at a terrific speed. Later is was found that by adding other chemicals to the gunpowder you could make it explode with different colours:
Sodium makes yellow
Strontium makes red
Copper makes blue
Barium makes green
How hot is the sun?
On its surface, the sun is about 6,000 ºC. At its centre it is nearer 14 million ºC! And it’s getting hotter. The heat and light it gives off come from nuclear reactions near its centre where the gases are constantly meeting and exploding. Scientists reckon the sun is about halfway through its life cycle. It is currently what they call a yellow dwarf. In time it will become 20 per cent hotter, at which point it will suddenly turn into a red giant. But don’t worry. This isn’t due to happen for another 5,000 million years!
Does fire occur naturally?
Yes. Volcanoes send out streams of hot melted rock called lava which is so hot that it can set fire to everything it touches. Lightning will occasionally strike trees or buildings and make them burn. You may also have seen a little flame dancing across the ground in marshy areas. This is called a will-o’-the-wisp or Jack o’Lantern, and is caused by gases rising up through the earth and catching fire when they reach the air. (When something g starts burning all on its own it is called spontaneous combustion.)
Can animals use fire?
All animals are afraid of fire and will run away from it. Man is the only living creature that can make fire. In the tropics there is a bug called a firefly – which is actually a flying beetle – and it seems to be carrying a tiny fire around with it under its tail. But this is not like a hot fire with real flames. It is simple the glow given off buy a special type of germ in the firefly’s body. The bugs use this light to find each other in the dark, and the glow is so bright that people in Asia and South America have even been known to keep groups of fireflies in cages to light their rooms at night.
When was the Great Fire of London?
London has been badly damaged by fire on several occasions, but the worst conflagration of all was in 1666 when about four-fifths of the old city were lost.
It began in the early hours of the morning on Sunday 2 September in a house belonging to the King’s baker in Pudding Lane near London Bridge. That summer had been particularly dry and hot and the wooden buildings with their tar-covered or thatched roofs burned easily, Still, the fire only spread slowly at first, and it could have been easily put out if the lord mayor or the townsfolk themselves had acted more quickly. But they didn’t. Fires were common in an age when the only lighting came from candles, and no one thought this one was anything out of the ordinary. Then suddenly a wind sprang up and in no time, it seemed all the buildings down to the Thames had gone up in flames.
London Bridge was destroyed along with all the houses on it (some people used to live in houses built on bridges in those days), and the wind, like a huge fan, continued to blow the fire westwards. By the third day it had destroyed St Paul’s Cathedral and the old town hall. People were throwing their belongings – and themselves – into the river to escape, others fled in their thousands to the countryside. Eventually the King, Charles II, and his brother the Duke of York, ordered houses to be blown up in the path of the fire to starve it of fuel. At last, on the fourth day, the wind dropped and the flames finally died out.
The debris was still smouldering six months later. Over 13,000 houses had been destroyed, along with 88 churches, four prisons and 400 streets. Incredibly, though, only six people had lost their lives. But although the Great Fire caused a lot of destruction, it did also lead to improvements. The old city had been dirty and overcrowded, the streets were narrow and disease was common. As a result of the fire the capital was redesigned on a grander, more modern scale, and Sir Christopher Wren rebuilt St Paul’s as well as over fifty other churches in handsome, fire-resistant stone, A landmark called The Monument now stands close to the spot where the fire started.
PS
I am no great fan of the exclamation mark. It’s like an athlete clapping his hands at his supporters to make them cheer louder for him. Nothing to do with you, mate. If we want to show our appreciation, we’ll get round to it in our own good time, thanks very much. Do something worth the acclaim first and we might give you the reaction you crave; till then, cool it.
On the page, if a joke is funny, it will make you laugh with or without the exclamation mark. And if you have to add one to indicate it’s a joke, you can’t have prepared the ground carefully enough first. But both the simplistic style and the noisome punctuation here were required as I was writing for the younger audiences who would be watching the Fireman Sam show for which the programme was produced.
I now suspect this was probably a mistake, and that talking down to people of whatever age is ultimately doing them a disservice. I only came to this conclusion later, once I’d had children of my own. We never used baby talk with ours, as it seemed to us they would learn that language first and then have to unlearn it in order to develop efficiency with the proper grown-up version later. We figured if you spoke to them like adults from the start, that’s the language they would become fluent in without having to change. And so it proved.
(This does not work with cats, by the way. A cat will happily ignore you all day long no matter what language you’re speaking, the bastards.)
PPS – apparently there is a movement to give a name to the combined exclamation mark/question mark symbol, the kind of abomination some authors like to use to indicate shocked disbelief. The proposed name for this thing is ‘interrobang’. What nonsense. Why not the much more simple and straightforward ‘questiomation mark’? I intend to seek a patent for this term the moment it appears to be gaining any kind of traction among my followers.