Candy and Andy in Flamstead

by Alan Dein

Candy & Andy (dolls) standing by a (real) horse and blacksmith/farrierCandy first appeared on the nation’s newsstands in January 1967. The comic stars Candy and her younger brother Andy, who are in fact life size doll-like replicas of real children, and Mr and Mrs Bearanda two adult giant panda bears in human clothing. Yes, this all sounds rather bonkers, but it’s the 1960s after all.

Over half a century has passed, and our never-ending fascination with this decade continues to this day. When Candy, Andy and the Bearandas, along with their pop art-styled stripey Mini, were conceived at Gerry & Sylvia Anderson’s Century 21 studios, in a trading estate in Slough, the year was 1966. It’s the Swinging London era, when Thunderbirds were absolutely “Go!”, and the wider soundtracks to our lives included the likes of The Beatles’ Revolver album, Sunny Afternoon by The Kinks, and Paint it Black by the Rolling Stones. It’s the age of Mary Quant and Twiggy. We are so familiar with, and can’t get enough of, all the fondly-remembered imagery of the era, so something like Candy becomes even more intriguing. It’s part of the experimental and playful creativity of the Sixties, but which offers us a previously forgotten window for us to time travel back to that time.

Unlike the Anderson’s “Supermarionation” projects, space age puppet shows for television such as Stingray, Thunderbirds and later Captain Scarlet, Candy was specifically based on photography and the printed page. They had launched the hugely successful TV Century 21 comic in 1965, then a year later Lady Penelope comic, so it seemed logical to try to create publications to attract even younger readers. The remit was to bring the characters to life using photography, to give Candy the three-dimensional real-life imagery of Thunderbirds and the others.

So how does a village in north-west Hertfordshire, recorded in the Domesday book, complete with a 12th century church and alms houses built in the 1660s connect to the story of one of this nation’s most-beloved treasures of popular culture? The story begins sometime in 1967 when Flamstead resident Roger Perry, then art director of Century 21 publishing, takes over photographic duties on Candy. This time for a series of hard-backed story books. As well as inheriting the massive Candy, Andy and Bearanda dolls plus a truckload of props from their former home in Slough, Perry was handed the keys to Stripey, a D Reg Morris Mini Minor painted in pop-art red, blue, yellow and white stripes. So just when you were wondering “what on earth did the neighbours think?”, the locals soon discovered that the dolls would become new members of the community, not quite living and breathing, but they’d certainly interact with and befriend them – even appearing in some of the photo shoots.

Bearanda (doll) sitting on the pavement having dropped his/her shoppingSignificantly, Roger Perry incorporates Candy’s day-to-day adventures into the Flamstead landscape, as well as the neighbouring villages and local landmarks. In the books, some locations are obvious to identify, like St Leonard’s Church and Trowley Hill Road, while in “Candy and Andy and the Duck who could not Swim” story, the eagle-eyed may spot that Mrs Bearanda has fallen over and spilled the contents of her shopping on to the High Street just outside the Three Blackbirds public house. In the same story, Candy and Andy visit blacksmith Bill Sibley at his Redbourn forge. Perry’s photos take on an almost documentary quality as they capture such traditional places on film not long before their closure.

We will always be both fascinated and repelled by lifelike or life-sized dolls – mannequins, ventriloquists’ dummies, creepy antique dolls, you name it. Candy and Andy appear to be dead ringers for those creepy blond haired alien children in “Village of the Damned”, the 1960 film adaptation of John Wyndham’s novel “The Midwich Cuckoos”. It’s another quintessentially British story set in a traditional village. Coincidentally, the film was shot in Letchmore Heath, also in Hertfordshire, where everything is so typical, except for the prowling horror that is the children. John Wyndham’s novels were once described as “cosy catastrophes”, and Candy can be viewed as definitely in the spirit of that. But of course, utterly unintentionally, and this time with Flamstead having a starring role.

6th Feb 2024