Articles
THE EVENING TELEGRAPH - DERBY, UK - SEPTEMBER 2003
END OF THE ROAD FOR MR SAFETY
Picture by David Snowdon
We rely on the road safety skills of savvy cartoon hedgehogs these days, but there was once a time when the biggest mover and shaker in cautionary campaigns was a man called Mr Safety. Mr Safety - aka Jason Conrad - toured the country in the 1970s and 1980s telling kids how to stay safe, to rave reviews. Decades on, and now living in Derby, he tells Simon Burch that he is now officially retiring.
JASON "Mr Safety" Conrad lifts up his shield in one movement and brings it in front of him. "Think!" he says, bringing his index finger, adorned with a large gold ring, pointing up in front of his face.
"That's what I used to do. Think!"
At one time, this simple movement would create mayhem. Children, sitting cross-legged in assemblies up and down the land, would mimic Mr Safety's one-word catchphrase, their own somewhat smaller fingers - and without jewellery - raised in similar pose.
But we are standing in Jason's conservatory and the word merely echoes amid the glass walls. The days when Mr Safety caused uproar in school assemblies - while simultaneously preaching a worthy road safety message - are in the dim and distant past.
Jason is 69 now and back in Derby. At the height of his fame, his hair mushroomed above his eyebrows and bubbled over towards his shoulders, which would be clad in a silver tracksuit, very much of the time.
The hair is somewhat less exuberant now, although it maintains a more than respectable presence for a man approaching hos 70th birthday. He has retained his moustache; although this, too, is more restrained, having whitened and been clipped to follow the curve of his top lip.
Despite this, and despite the addition of a pair of glasses, Jason is still recognisable. But there is one final development. Jason has an announcement to make.
This is, he says, is the end for Mr Safety. He is not gone - Jason will always be Mr Safety to his fans - but he wants to afford the country's pioneering road safety crusader the opportunity to wave a fond farewell. It is over.
Mr Safety began life when Jason witnessed a road accident involving a little boy, in 1971. An out-of-work actor - "I was, what do you call it, resting," - he started to think about what he could do.
