Honest Jake Speare & Rasher Bacon – in Basher Rasher
Had you asked me, before I trawled through my diaries, how long Graham Majin and I had spent on making the animated film, Basher Rasher, I’d have said that we spent most of the days of most of the weeks of that summer on the project.
But this turns out to be far from the case.
It is very clear from the diaries that dad weaned me into taking an interest in Standard 8 cine in late July…
…after which, Graham Majin hoves into view, right at the end of that month.
I have corresponded with Graham on this topic, briefly, in October 2026, ahead of writing up this episode. Graham feigned little concern about being associated publicly with our animated films and recordings some 50 years later:
Blog away to your heart’s content 😊…
…said Graham, foiling my plans ahead of attempted blackmail.
Graham did, along the way in our correspondence, misidentify our efforts as “Super 8”. They absolutely were not. Standard 8 was the medium.
Graham also recalled that, some years ago, I sent him one of our films in the hope that he could, through his BBC connections, make a better attempt at preserving it than I had made. The film disintegrated in his hands during that attempt.
Possibly Graham suspects that the incriminating evidence is therefore all lost – but that is not the case. Our second film, Speare Trek, was the film that disintegrated. My rudimentary preservation/digitisation attempts on Basher Rasher remain and modern techniques should enable a bit of “digital remastering” on both of them.
Anyway…
…here are the diary extracts for the following fortnight:
Saturday 31 July 1976 – went to shop with Graham [Majin]. He came to tea. TV Seaside Show (yuk)
This is my first diary mention of Graham Majin. As for that TV show…
“An outside broadcast from the BBC1 Big Top which this week visits Weymouth starring Jimmy Tarbuck and featuring The Bachelors, Sacha Distel with The Grumbleweeds, Keith Harris, Kenny Lynch…“
…no wonder I wrote “yuk”.
Sunday 1 August 1976 – went to Il Carretto. Graham came in afternoon & evening, discussed cartoon. TV Play: American
In those days, I used the term “cartoon” to describe an animated film. This was the first diary mention of the project that became “Basher Rasher“.
The only American item I can find that evening was a late night film, A Place In the Sun based on the novel American Tragedy.
Monday 2 August 1976 – Graham came. Cartoon coming along. TV Get Some In, It’s A Square World [Michael Bentine]
Tuesday 3 August 1976 – Dentist morning. Graham, cartoon, coming along well.
Wednesday 4 August 1976 – G[randma] Jenny afternoon. TV Benny Hill, Are You Being Served, Dr Finlay
Thursday 5 August 1976 – Graham all day. Started shooting. TV What’s My Line
Friday 6 August 1976 – Graham. Good day’s shooting. Sounded films for dad.
Graham and I must have completed the soundtrack recording before we started shooting – probably on the Tuesday afternoon or perhaps unmentioned activity on the Wednesday morning.
The soundtrack is well preserved, as I digitised my reel-to-reel archive some 20 years ago. As a taster for the film, those who want to get their lug-holes around the soundtrack can do so here:
“Sounded films for dad” means that I put stripes onto some of the old family cine films and possibly added some rudimentary soundtracks too. I especially remember doing that on the film of their 1960 holiday, Spain, Catalonia, Costa Brava, which dad had neglected to stripe and soundtrack.
Part of my purpose in doing those tasks with the family cine was to learn how to do it for the epic animated movie in progress, Basher Rasher.
Saturday 7 August 1976 – Graham in afternoon & evening, good filming.
Sunday 8 August 1976 – Il Carretto. Polaroid photo. TV Frank Sinatra film [The Joker Is Wild].
Monday 9 August 1976 – cricket on common in afternoon. New camera. TV Steptoe & Son, Get Some In, Inside Medicine, The Gun.
“New camera” will have been a still camera for me to sue on our forthcoming holiday in La Manga.. “New” will have meant “new to me”. I am pretty sure this one was a second-hand Zenith B – basic, but with a half-decent lens and it was a single lens reflex (SLR). I had been nagging dad for some while that I thought I’d do better with an SLR camera.
Tuesday 10 August 1976 – cartooning all day. Doing well.
Wednesday 11 August 1976 – went to school. Stationery with Eric [Randall]. TV Are You Being Served.
Not sure what “stationery with Eric” entailed. Presumably the use of child labour to help him undertake Alleyn’s School quartermaster duties during the summer. I suspect that Graham Majin was also involved in that activity but in any case that would have left little or no time for animated film making.
Thursday 12 August 1976 – continued cartooning. TV Jeux sans frontières
Friday 13 August 1976 – went to Graham. War game. TV Invisible Man
These diary entries suggest to me that we finished filming on the morning of Friday 13 August and “celebrated” by going to Graham’s house and playing a war game – a passion of Graham’s at that time.
Saturday 14 August 1976 – Lazy day. Watched cricket [mostly Dennis Amiss scoring heaps of runs in a lost cause at The Oval]. G. Jenny. Library. Cleared room.
I love the “cleared room” reference. Mum probably threatened to throw me out unless I tidied up my bedroom-cum-movie-studio before dinner!
Graham and I must have finished filming Basher Rasher, as the studio was dismantled and the Quartz 5 movie camera re-allocated to the impending Harris family holiday. I have photographic evidence that the camera was with us on that holiday:
The film(s) containing Basher Rasher will have been sent off by post to Kodak for processing while we were on holiday.
It was considered completely normal to have to wait a few weeks between shooting any photos or video and seeing the results, back then.
In the same way, I shall keep avid Ogblog readers (and Graham) in suspenders for a while before publishing the film, which was preserved in a vaguely viewable form (via VHS) and subsequently digitised.
Before readers and prospective viewers get too excited at the thought of seeing this five minute masterpiece, please bear in mind how quickly this project was rushed through from conception to “wrap”. Graham and I quickly decided that Basher Rasher was merely a pilot for the animated movie we’d really wanted to make: Speare Trek. The story of that movie unfolded in 1977.