'On Safari' - with Armand and Micheala Dennis. Plump, bewhiskered Armand and his blond, leggy, young wife, Micheala, were as routine a spectacle on television in their day as David Attenborough would become.
The programme began and ended with each of them sitting on either side of their two-man boyscout tent, talking to the camera. It was all very twee and professional-in-the-bush. Theirs really were the last true safaris into 'darkest' Africa. The world was a big, big place in those days. Travel was strictly for the adventurous upper and middle-classes. Package tourism for a mass market had yet to be fully realised.
So, it was intrepid souls like the Dennis Duo who brought us the intimate movie insights of the rare and exotic livestock in Africa. A very young Attenborough was just about to get a foothold in the business.
One of the more entertaining aspects of the presentation was their woeful dubbing, which often got their voices way out of lipsynch. It was such a regular feature that comedian Benny Hill used to spoof them up in his own regular shows.
Now, Africa's favourite weapon is not the assegai so much as a Kalashnikov. The wonderful wildness has been largely ruralised, and the iconic creatures now face extinction. All in just half a century. Such is progress.
Some of these recordings still survive, apparently, probably because the originals belong to the Dennis estate. Their kind, however, are gone forever.
The programme began and ended with each of them sitting on either side of their two-man boyscout tent, talking to the camera. It was all very twee and professional-in-the-bush. Theirs really were the last true safaris into 'darkest' Africa. The world was a big, big place in those days. Travel was strictly for the adventurous upper and middle-classes. Package tourism for a mass market had yet to be fully realised.
So, it was intrepid souls like the Dennis Duo who brought us the intimate movie insights of the rare and exotic livestock in Africa. A very young Attenborough was just about to get a foothold in the business.
One of the more entertaining aspects of the presentation was their woeful dubbing, which often got their voices way out of lipsynch. It was such a regular feature that comedian Benny Hill used to spoof them up in his own regular shows.
Now, Africa's favourite weapon is not the assegai so much as a Kalashnikov. The wonderful wildness has been largely ruralised, and the iconic creatures now face extinction. All in just half a century. Such is progress.
Some of these recordings still survive, apparently, probably because the originals belong to the Dennis estate. Their kind, however, are gone forever.
