46. ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME…SCOOBY DOO

The absolute very first time I saw Scooby Doo was in the early 70s when it was just a cartoon rather than a set of distinctly average live-action films starring the girl from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Also, in my day, there was only one dog and it certainly wasn’t an irritating little yappy thing called Scrappy which made you long for a guest appearance from Cruella de Vil and that dognapping van of hers.

Scooby Doo was named after Frank Sinatra’s scatting at the end of Strangers in the Night. I've just listened to the song (after googling what 'scatting' meant) and thank goodness they didn’t pick Da Da Da Da Da Di-Ya instead, for several reasons not least of which was it didn't actually rhyme with 'Where Are You?'.

Apparently Scooby was a Great Dane (who knew?) but, with his brown fur and black spots, he looked like a weird cross-breed of Dalmatian and Rottweiler. He talked but, let's be honest, pretty bloody badly. I could never understand much of what he said although ‘Rooby-Rooby-Roo’ seemed to be his catchphrase, often followed by a Muttley laugh (and there is no catchphrase in the history of television which can’t be improved by the addition of a Muttley laugh). Just as often we'd get ‘Ruh-roh, Raggy’ when the shit really hit the fan which is what shit tends to do when a group of young people make the unusual decision not to go to the pub but head for, say, an abandoned mineshaft instead.

His best friend (or owner?) was a hippy called Shaggy who had a habit of wearing a green t-shirt & brown cords and shouting ‘Zoinks’. He was either aspergers or a pot-head. Judging by the flower-power psychedelic van, I suspect the latter which would mean he joins Dylan from Magic Roundabout as another drug-taking role model for us impressionable kids in the 70s.

Their gang was called Mystery Inc (which I always assumed was a form of secret writing they used to solve cases) and the show was based on 4 young people and a dog investigating a series of mysteries. Hmmm, didn’t Enid Blyton do exactly the same thing in the UK decades earlier with the Famous Five? 2 girls, 2 boys and a dog named Timmy/Scooby (I always thought that Frank Sinatra story sounded questionable). Substitute a few scooby snacks for lashings of ginger beer and it's clear that Hanna & Barbera lifted the whole idea off our Enid. And the end result? 50 years after she died, Enid is now forgotten, cancelled for her politically-incorrect stories (presumably Noddy and Big Ears weren't gay enough), whilst, on the other side of the pond, Scooby & Co are Hollywood royalty instead.

The leader of the gang was Fred (no doubt because he wore a cravat - fine for a gap-toothed old cad like Terry-Thomas but not the most obvious choice for a hip young bloke in the 70s) who spent every episode getting hypnotised or setting traps for the various monsters & ghosts which Scooby & Shaggy would almost certainly end up setting off themselves. This was partly because Fred would always suggest the team split up to hunt their target and, for some inexplicable reason, would plump for the combination - Scooby & Shaggy - most likely to muck things up. He sometimes sent Velma with them too though, presumably so he could be alone with Daphne and take her up the dark passageway without the others seeing.

Like most boys my age (by which I mean back then not now), I had quite a soft spot for accident-prone Daphne with her purple dress and green scarf. In fact, I fancied any female cartoon character who was remotely sexy – Penelope Pitstop, Jessica Rabbit, the bunny off the Caramel adverts and Wilma Flintstone who reminded me of my teacher (if my teacher wore a pearl necklace and a shredded white dress which, sadly, she only did in my dreams and not while making us practice our times tables).

The odd one was Velma (I always thought she was called Thelma – as in Louise’s mate – who on earth has heard of Velma as a name?). She used to wear an orange chunky jumper with matching knee length socks, short skirt and glasses which was an outfit full of mixed signals. Invariably, her glasses would be knocked off during some chase scene which meant she tended to spend most of the episode crawling around on all fours looking for them. She’s just being rebooted as a gender-fluid lesbian of Asian origin without her orange outfit for a new HBO show which takes place in a universe where Scooby and the others don't exist. Er, is it just me but what's the point in calling her Velma then?

Apparently, their full names were revealed at some point as Norville ‘Shaggy’ Rogers, Daphne Blake, Fred Jones and Velma Dinkley (they really had it in for her didn’t they – she’s like Play School's Hamble who all the producers and presenters hated).

I'm not sure if Scooby's surname was Doo or whether he had one of those double-barrelled first names like Sarah Jane off Dr Who but both he and Shaggy clearly had some sort of eating disorder which meant they were permanently hungry and so were easily coerced by the others, with bribes of Scooby snacks or giant sandwiches, to do something they didn’t really want to (a useful life lesson which many of us kids put into practice in the school playground). They also had a tendency to ride unicycles a lot which were clearly more common on American roads than they were over here because I only ever saw them in US cartoons on the telly and never wheeling past me as I trudged to school on a damp winter morning in the UK.

No one could argue that the Mystery Inc team weren't highly successful - nearly 90 cases in the original run (by which I mean the episodes before Scrappy Doo and his Puppy Power made an unwelcome entry in 1979 - there's a smutty joke there somewhere but I won't demean myself, or you, by going for it) and a 100% success rate in crime-solving which would be the envy of any police force or detective agency in the world, stats matched only by (surprise, surprise) the Famous Five. Told you. Her estate should sue for royalties.

If only they'd been patrolling the streets of the UK instead of the American Wild West or wherever it was they patrolled (clearly somewhere with an abundance of haunted houses, ghost towns, mineshafts and abandoned amusement arcades anyway) because we could've asked them to unmask the criminals who vandalised the Blue Peter garden. I'd love to have seen them rip the Les Ferdinand mask off the perpetrator (we never really believed that one did we, despite his admission of guilt - no doubt secured under duress) to reveal John Noakes telling us he'd have got away with it if it wasn't for those meddling kids and a slightly sheepish Shep muttering 'Ruh-roh, Raggy' behind him.

---

Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...SUMMER HOLIDAYS IN THE 70s/80s

---

If you like this blog, please take a look elsewhere on the website (here) for similar nostalgic takes on Grease, mixed tapes, Magic Roundabout and the Young Ones amongst others.

And if you don't want to miss a new post, subscribe for free here