Look and Read was a schools series that started in 1967, and is still running in 2001. In the early 1980s it featured Wordy (a strange camp orange blob with arms) who lived in a variety of unusual places, including his Wordlab space station orbiting the Earth with his tracksuited male companion, Colin.

Wordy would happily while away his life finding out interesting - if simplistic - things about words. Did you know there are two "o"s in "book", "look", and "took"? Thought not.

They were helped in their crusade by a host of cartoon characters, including Rip Van Twinkle, and by short dramas featuring children discovering exciting things.

The Boy From Space was one such drama. It told the story of Peep-Peep, a mysterious alien child, who was helped by two children, and kindly local astrologer, Mister Bunting. In an eerie echo of Terminator, Peep-Peep was being relentlessly stalked by an evil alien hunter, and only the children�s quick-witted reading ability could save him.

One of the problems the children faced was that Peep-Peep�s language was different to our own. It turned out, in a dramatic twist, the Peep-Peep was in fact speaking English, only written backwards. A crucial plot point was the discovery that "Pots" was in fact alien for "Stop".