The first time I saw anything by Gerry Anderson was when Granada TV repeated Space 1999 and Thunderbirds during weekend lunchtimes in the early 1980s. I was growing up in one of those much-joked about homes where ITV was almost never watched; Gerry Anderson was one of the few exceptions.
I had heard about his illness with Alzheimer's a while back, and he died yesterday.
The great irony in Gerry Anderson's story is that he had no real desire to work in televison puppetry, yet he made his name there by being so good at it. When he came to making the live action series that he would have preferred, posterity hasn't been as kind. The obituaries I've so far read have dwelled on the puppet shows like Captain Scarlet and - inevitably - Thunderbirds, rather than what came afterwards. Although Space 1999 was designed by committee (and it shows), U.F.O. remains my favourite Anderson series.
He could be frustrating from time to time. I remember a few years ago when another company had the rights to Thunderbirds and based an awful cinema film on it. But rather than complain about how some of his best known characters had been made to look like spare pricks at a wedding, Gerry Anderson chose to complain that the cars were wrong.
Much British television - especially of the 1960s and 1970s - lacks visual flair, but the Anderson series do much to put that right. To hell with aerodynamics - for 50 minutes each week, Thunderbird 2 could actually fly, and I'll always be thankful for that.
