A Comedy On This Day: Are You Being Served? - The Clock (14 March 1974)

 Special commendation this week for Tony Oxley of the BBC Visual Effects Department, who has to design a malfunctioning mechanical cat, for an in-store promotion of 'Pussy Boots' furry slippers. With its glaring yellow headlamp eyes, rotating head and revolving tail, its an alarming prop, deserving of rather more than its minute in the limelight, which would give you hours of entertainment if you had it in front of you. When the thing explodes it obeys the laws of comedy rather than plausible mechanics, with the singed head rising one foot on a pole and a large spring dangling from its workings.

 Tony Oxley went on to design another great BBC prop in 1974, the Doctor Who Sontaran Experiment robot, although that machine was rather less the stuff of nightmares than this mechanical cat.