EMISSIONS:Communicating with kids requires more than talking the talk - frankly, don't even try walking the walk, writes
Kilian Doyle
FOR MY sins, I am a child of the 1970s. If you are of a similar generation, you will hopefully be able to look back on those years with fondness.
One of my earliest memories is of watching Wanderly Wagon which is one of those things, like getting the bus to Bray for a treat and buying a week's worth of chemicals masquerading as sweets for 5p, upon which you always look back with nostalgic affection, without being able to admit to yourself that they were actually rubbish. But Judge, Foxy and Mr Crow were all I had. So I loved them.
It is with this rose-tinted hindsight that I look back on the Safe Cross Code. When it came out in 1974, it was, in my four-year-old mind, the business. The tune was catchy, the message easily understood, and the accompanying film was from the future. (Scoff if you like, but these were the days when a Czech animation of a bit of string morphing into a bear was what passed for high-tech on RTÉ.)
The Safe Cross Code video was one of a plethora of great public service announcements of the era, up there with a wizened old nun shouting "ba" into a deaf kid's ear and a pair of kid's legs sticking up out of a barrel of water on a farm. Innocent times, eh?
I can safely say that the twin onslaught of State and Church mean the Safe Cross Code and the Hail Mary are as ingrained on my psyche as the alphabet. The former, in fairness, has probably saved my life over a hundred thousand times. Sadly, the latter has proved as useful in my life as knowing how to squawk in fluent Dodo.
You'd imagine I was only too delirah and excirah when the song was regurgitated by Gaybo and the Road Safety Authority to teach a new wave of kids how to avoid getting splatted by an Austin Princess.
Well, you'd be wrong. The sight of that hip, groovy dude Brendan Grace poncing about in his pants made me want to free a nipper, fit it with a set of underarm ballistic missiles and set it on him.
"The song is as relevant and important today as it was when we originally recorded it over 30 years ago," said Grace at the campaign launch. That's true, Brendan. The question is: are you?
What next? Will they wheel out Twink to explain this amazing new Betamax invention, or trundle out Larry Gogan to enthuse at length about a wild pop combo from Sweden going by the name of Abba?
Better still, why not go the whole hog and just disinter Charlie Haughey so his corpse can give us all a lesson in belt-tightening?
Seriously. He may mean well, but is Grace really the best they can do? I know there's a recession on, and so the likes of Beyoncé and Jay-Z are slightly out of their league, but surely the RSA's budget can stretch beyond a fish supper and taxi fare home?
And is it really appropriate for kids to be taught by a 57-year-old man in shorts? Perhaps 30 years ago. But now?
There was a time, many moons ago, when parents wouldn't think twice if a bloke in a school uniform and boy scout cap sidled up to their kids in a playground and offered to bring them off to show them a "safe place". Nowadays, he'd be hung, drawn and quartered by a vengeful mob.
My point is this: If you are going to get kids to look up from their PlayStations and laptops and pay attention to something as important as being able to cross a road safely, you must speak to them in their language. What child will have a clue who Bottler is or, more importantly, care what he says?
I realise there is now a hip-hop remix of the Safe Cross Code. This may be one of the greatest things since sunlight.
Or, it may not. Such new-fangled fripperies aside, the fact remains that Bottler's face doesn't fit anymore.
So the RSA needs to get modern and accept that those halcyon days of Gaybo's middle age are ancient history.
Righ'?