Popular Nostalgia

Rate This Nostalgia

How Nostalgic does Hartbeat – with Tony Hart make you feel? Rate below.

(2 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)

 Loading ...

For a decade between the mid 80s and 90s, children were inspired to take up painting and other forms of art by the spectacularly talented Tony Hart, on his TV show Hartbeat (not to be confused with the ITV 1960s stlye police drama Heartbeat!).

Hartbeat also brought us the great character of morph, and also his little friend Chas (see gif on the left which can be found on Tony Hart’s Official Website) who were plasticine chaps who got up to all sorts of capers.

Tony Hart was a phenomenal illustrator and I used to be amazed by the quality of his work on the show. It seemed to me that, unlike Neil Buchanon on Art Attack, here was a man who didn’t rely on “ones I made earlier” and just drew the picture from start to finish in about 5 minutes. I could never hope to be as good, but I gave it a shot.

One of the favourite, and best remembered items in the show was the gallery, which everyone remembers, if you don’t think so, just the music will stir up memories of horrible collages and crudely painted monsters. I’m pretty sure I sent some of those in, though I was never featured. My brother and I even tried to put our ages down as “aged 6 years” to level the playing field, alas to no avail: even a 6 year old could draw better than me aged 12.

Tony Hart is now in his 80s and still going strong. All power to him.