The High-T Website - 10th Anniversary Retrospective

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The High-T Website has reached it's tenth birthday, starting out as only a few webpages on the 8th December 2003 the website grew rapidly into a website with more information on T-Bag than I could ever have considered possible! The website has got more interactive, starting with voting polls and trivia quizzes.

Looking back over the website which has changed in physical appearance and sheer number of webpages (currently standing at 193 main pages) I'm incredibly proud of my humble website as a tribute to this much loved childrens tv show.

Looking back over ten years, I decided to pick my top ten T-Bag/website moments during this past decade.

Top Ten T-Bag moments

These are my top ten moments, the order is somewhat irrelevant and has changed many times during the writing of this feature:



The DVD petition (2004 - present)

The Bring T-Bag out on DVD petition launched in July 2004 for everyone to sign who wanted to see T-Bag released on DVD. By February 2005 this had reached 500 signatures, passing 1000 signatures in December 2005, doubling to 2000 signatures by January 2007 and hitting over 3000 signatures in April 2009. Currently standing at a very impressive 3391 signatures, this petition showed the demand for having T-Bag on DVD. This DVD petition was a major factor that lead Revelation Films to announce a release of the series in 2010 (but more on that later).



The Re-designs and anniversary updates (2004 - present)

22nd Anniversary banner (2007)

Ever since April 2004 I've added updates to the website on the 4th April to celebrate T-Bag's anniversary since being broadcast in the UK. It started with the 19th anniversary in 2004 through to the 28th anniversary in 2013.

On the 25th anniversary in 2010 I had the radical re-design to this cleaner, crisper and easier to navigate (I think so) website. This redesign had been in planning and experimental/testing phases for over a year but it made the website easier to update and expand upon.

I thoroughly enjoy my annual 'big' updates to celebrate the anniversary so have already started some ideas for the 29th anniversary next year. I hope you've enjoyed these 'big' updates too (as well as all those throughout the year).



Going social (2003 - present)

On the 24th October 2003 The T-Bag Forum went live on probards, the forum predates the website by over two weeks! Since then the forum has grown to almost 500 members, between them posting hundreds of topics and posts. The Forum was a great way of getting T-Bag fans together online and interacting with each other.

In the early days of the website, and in order to reach others who may have forgotten the show, the website had it's own MSN group and Yahoo group. A few members joined but the Forum was where the activity of the fans gathered. These two groups are no longer online but another group was to emerge, which brings me on to...

In recent years the website has ventured into facebook with it's own facebook group called The T-Bag Fan Club named after a throw away line by T-Shirt in episode five of T. Bag and the Rings of Olympus! The facebook group has grown to 170 members (at the time of writing) and has been a hive of activity. It's a great way to talk about the series, the cast, the DVDs and our memories of the show.

And it was only a matter of time before the website joined the phenomenon we all know as Twitter! The High T Website went live on Twitter in April 2011, you can find me @HighTWeb, now with over a 100 tweets and 44 followers. During this time I am a follower of John Hasler, Kellie Bright, Fantom Films, Revelation Films and many more. Thanks for your Tweets, retweets, favourites and follows (I know all the lingo).

In the past ten years I've also had numerous e-mails from people who remember T-Bag with great affection. It's wonderful to hear from everyone, sorry to those I didn't get round to replying to, I have had some very busy times!



John Plant's Set Designs & Sketches (September 2008 & October 2010)

It all started with a post on the T-Bag Forum in January 2008, John Plant's nephew had some of John's sketches and set designs he had done for several TV programmes including T-Bag.

After e-mailing him, and giving him chance to go through all his Uncle's sketches and designs he decided to sell them to me after we had settled on a value (of course they're priceless but I couldn't stretch to that). In September 2008 I had received them and on seeing the vast amount of detail in each and every one I started to have a deeper appreciation of all the hard work and talent that is needed to create those (sometimes wobbly) sets of the T-Room, forests, castles, caverns etc.

After receiving the set designs I then had the task of scanning them in on an A4 scanner, most of the set designs took eight individual scans before aligning them all up to make the full sized image.

On the 8th December 2008 (The High-T Website's 5th birthday) 50 of these designs were added on the Designing T-Bag - The Sets page. The rest of the designs were added on the 4th April 2009 (T-Bag's 24th anniversary) including the larger designs that took between 15 to 18 scans each on my A4 scanner!

I was blown away by these fantastic designs, I still look at them occassionally now (over five years later) and find some minor detail or comment that I hadn't noticed before. It was great to share them with the fans of the show who were visiting my website.

Fast forward a couple of years, following the announcement of the first series being released on DVD I e-mailed John's nephew to see if he would be willing to sell or loan the sketches he had mentioned that his Uncle had done of the show. After a few e-mails had been exchanged he decided that he would sell them to me.

The sketches are in two separate books so I paid for one of the books (containing the sketches from Wonders in Letterland) and the following month I paid for the second book. When I offered scans of these sketches to Revelation Films for the first series DVD I was too late for them to be included on the DVD. The sketches for the first series were added on a new page added to the website on 8th November 2010 to mark the release of the first series DVD. These sketches can be found on the Designing T-Bag - The Sketches page.

The sketches for T-Bag Strikes Again were added as a bonus feature for the second DVD in January 2011 and I got given a credit on screen (I didn't expect one so was surprised when I saw it). I was asked to keep this a secret from everyone to make it a surprise for those who were buying the DVD, I didn't even tell Lee and Grant, the writers of the show, it was that hush hush.

I've added the sketches for the 3rd series, which appeared as a bonus feature on the T-Bag Bounces Back DVD in May 2011. And I've also added a few from Turn on to T-Bag exclusively on the website as part of Christmas updates in December 2012.

These sketches cost a lot more than the set designs did but I was so pleased to be able to share them with everyone via the website and for those who bought the DVDs.

Many thanks goes to John Plant's family for letting me buy these sketches and set designs and of course to John Plant himself for his work on the show.



Getting e-mails from Lee & Grant (2004 - present)

The website was only a few months old when I got some lovely e-mails from Lee Pressman and Grant Cathro (the writers of the show).

From time to time I drop in on Jeremy's site for a blast of happy nostalgia (and to escape work for 10 minutes!) and today I discovered the link to your wonderful new fanpage. I just wanted to say a huge THANK YOU for helping to keep alive the memory of T-Bag. Lee and I are constantly overwhelmed by the warmth and affection shown by fans of the series. The T-Bag years were incredibly jolly times for us, as well.

Grant's first e-mail to me (12th February 2004)

What a fabulous site. You're a credit to The T. Set. Keep up the good work.

Lee's first e-mail to me (14th April 2004)

They have been very supportive of the website throughout the years. Both Lee and Grant have been kind enough to answer dozens of questions, some of which have been asked by visitors of the website, as part of interviews for the website, these can be found in the Interviews section.

Lee and Grant have also sent me numerous T-Bag stuff from their time on the show, these include a script from T. Bag and The Rings of Olympus (episode 6) and several photographs, copies of magazine cuttings and more which can be found on My T-Bag collection page.

But my contact with those that were part of the show didn't just stop with Lee and Grant, I decided to try and contact some of the cast of the show.

I've had the pleasure of doing a telephone interview with Georgina Hale in March 2005 which was added to the website the following month as part of T-Bag's 20th anniversary updates. It was wonderful to chat to her on the phone, although I was incredibly nervous, listening to her memories of the show. The interview with Georgina can be found on the Georgina Hale (Tabatha Bag) Interview page.

The following year I wrote to Elizabeth Estensen and a while later she replied answering the questions that I had put to her. It was lovely to hear back from her about her thoughts on the show, she even sent a black and white photograph from Revenge of the T. Set. The interview with Elizabeth can be found on the Elizabeth Estensen (Tallulah Bag) Interview page.

My sincere gratitude is given to all those, cast and crew, who have contributed to the website over the past ten years!

T. Bag The Reunion Documentary DVD



Reunion DVD release (September 2007)

On 17th September 2007 Fantom Films released it's much anticipated T. Bag The Reunion Documentary DVD, after being touted earlier in 2007, with filming in April and May 2007 it was going to be several months of waiting for the DVD to be released and arrive through the post.

The wait was worth it, of course, watching it for the first time was utterly superb. Listening to all the memories of the cast and crew of their years in the show was a heart-warming nostalgic self-indulgence. This DVD reaffirms what made T-Bag so special, it was the people who put so much time, energy, commitment and passion into it.

Fantom Films had done such a great job on the DVD, filling it with extra interviews, photographs and the behind the scenes footage of Take off with T. Bag (courtesy of Lee Pressman) which was brilliant to watch.

Many thanks goes to all those involved in the DVD, the interviewees that appear but especially the team at Fantom Films.

And if you've not bought a copy, it's still available to order from the Fantom Films website here.

T-Bag Trending on Twitter



CiTV Old Skool Weekend T-Bag episode (January 2013)

During December 2012 Children's ITV had started teasing the public about their plans to mark their 30th birthday in January 2013. The rumours of the CiTV channel showing old programmes seemed to be true as online TV schedules started showing that an episode from 1987 was due to be broadcast.

On the weekend of the 5th/6th January 2013 CiTV aired numerous old children's TV shows as part of their 'Old Skool Weekend', including other Pressman and Cathro shows such as Spatz, Mike & Angelo and the Tomorrow People.

The episode of T-Bag that was shown was Episode four of T-Bag Bounces Back on the 5th January 2013 at 10:30am (coincidentally 25 years to the day that Episode one of Turn On To T-Bag aired in 1988). During the airing of the episode T-Bag was trending on Twitter (see image right).

Hit Counter for website

During the day the website had notched up 325 hits (where usually it gets between 20 to 30 hits a day), the following few days saw higher number of visitors than usual (see image). This averaged 87 visitors each day (over the week).

It was wonderful to see an episode of T-Bag being broadcast on TV (the last time an episode of T-Bag was broadcast was in 1993) and the Old Skool Weekend was a huge success for the CiTV channel

The overnight viewing figures show the episode of T-Bag was watched by 304,000 (a 3.8% audience share) and the tenth most watched programme on CiTV on the Saturday (although T-Bag was 6th by it's audience share).

T-Bag also came 9th as voted in the Radio Times What's your favourite CiTV show poll beating the likes of Press Gang, Count Duckula and Woof!

Well stuff me in the cannon and blast me over the horizon, what a success the CiTV Old Skool Weekend was!



Tea Party 2012 (February 2012)

Revelation Films were due to release a complete DVD boxset of the series in January 2012 and as such Fantom Films put on an event for T-Bag fans to celebrate and meet some of the cast and crew of the show, this was to take part in February 2012.

The news of the DVD boxset was being postponed by Revelation Films happened during December 2011. Despite the lack of a DVD boxset to celebrate the event went ahead as planned.

For a mere £30 (well if you don't count travel costs etc) you could attend the event that fans could have only dreamt of a few years ago. The event was lining up to be an all singing, all dancing and all talking TV spectacular (minus the TV, the singing and the dancing) with both T-Bag's, T-Shirt and Debbie, regular guests Jan Hunt and Matt Zimmerman and also the writers Lee Pressman and Grant Cathro with costume designer Raymond Childe all due to appear.

On the day neither Georgina Hale nor Raymond Childe could attend but the event was nothing short of magical and was my (and many others) opportunity to meet with the cast and crew.

After the event I wrote up an account of the day which you can read about on The Great T. Bag Tea Party 2012 page.

Many thanks goes to Fantom Films for arranging the event.



Reunion DVD filming (May 2007)

Lee and Grant invited me down to London for the second day of filming for Fantom Films T-Bag The Reunion documentary due to take place on Saturday 19th May 2007. I've never taken so little time to make a decision, of course I was going to go! My expectations for the day was sky high, getting to meet some of the cast and crew I had watched on the TV screen episode after episode. If I could go back and tell my younger self that one day I'd be meeting the likes of T-Bag and T-Shirt I don't think I'd have believed myself (apart from the fact that I'd be a bit freaked out that time travel was actually possible). It was a joy to be able to watch the interviews being filmed.

Listening to all the memories of the cast and crew, being rekindled with photographs from studio days, I must have had a constant grin on my face. It was a very surreal day, I couldn't quite believe I was there. All the cast and crew were so welcoming and friendly that initial nervous feeling soon disappeared and I joined in the many chats and conversations throughout the day.

It also gave me the chance to meet up with Jeremy Vines (visit his T-Room website) who has been very helpful over the years with contributions and advice for the website. He showed me the Tabatha Bag costumes he has and let me take a few photographs of them. It was lovely to finally meet him and have a chat inbetween the interviews being films.

The day was over far too quickly but it was great to sit in on the interviews and listen to the questions and answers that didn't make the final cut of the DVD, wonderful to meet Lee and Grant after exchanging several e-mails in the preceeding years.

You can read all about my day and see photographs I had taken on The Great T. Bag Tea Party page.

Many thanks to Lee and Grant for inviting me to such a special day.



DVD Releases of series 1-3 (November 2010, January 2011 & May 2011)

T-Bag Series 1, 2 & 3 DVDs

Well what else could be at number one? After years of campaigning for a DVD release of the series Revelation Films announce in May 2010 that they were going to release series one on DVD in November 2010. The months of anticipation went by with teases and tweets from Revelation Films. We all rushed to get our pre-orders in (via online retailers such as Amazon, HMV and Play.com) and my DVD arrived early (thanks HMV) on the Friday 5th November, I watched the episodes and commentaries with a huge smile on my face. The picture and sound quality was incredible (especially compared to blurry old VHS recordings), I truly felt like I was watching the series for the first time, members who had posted on The T-Bag Forum were equally pleased and impressed.

We didn't have to wait long until series two was released on DVD in January 2011. Again the audio and video quality of the episodes were a drastic improvement over old TV recording on VHS tapes. The commentaries were marvellous again and the extra galleries utterly brilliant.

A few months of waiting gave us series three released on DVD in May 2011. This sadly would be the last series released on DVD to date but what a series it is, with some of my favourite episodes and the lovable musical Major Happy. This completed the 'Debbie Trilogy' (as some fans call it) within a period of six months, it would have been great to see the individual series released as the announced fourth series DVD that was due in August 2011 was indefinitely postponed, a while later a complete series boxset was planned instead.

Who Made-ja happy? Revelation Films did with this trio of DVDs. It would be great to see more series on DVD via the potential complete boxset, Please Revelation Films, we want to give you our money.

And looking forward...



29th & 30th anniversaries

Next April sees T-Bag celebrate it's 29th anniversary and as usual updates will be added to the website to celebrate. But it's April 2015 which will mark T-Bag's 30th anniversary, so alongside the usual anniversary updates I'll have to plan something that little bit special, any ideas?



DVD boxset kickstarter

Hopefully, and not in the too distant future, Revelation Films will give us, the fans, the chance to pledge our money in order for them to be financially able to produce the much wanted complete series DVD boxset with all the trimmings. Please Revelation Films.