I never encountered Janet & John when I began to read at my south London school in the early sixties. My class was given Mac and Tosh (do you see what they did there?  I assume the authors also ran a chain of raincoat shops?)

I missed out on Here we go (Janet & John become football hooligans); Off to play (Janet and John discover the joys of truancy) and I know a story (where Janet & John learn the art of pathological lying).

No, I had two Scottie dogs helping me improve my four-and-a-half-year-old reading skills.

The early books were Mac and Tosh learn to read and Mac and Tosh learn to write.  I moved on from this series quite quickly and assumed the next editions covered: Mac and Tosh learn elementary computer programming and Mac and Tosh secure world peace.

Because I progressed away from books with lines like here is the dog; we like the dog; John likes dogging, it wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties that I learned that dogs can neither read nor write.  I blame this on Dr Doolittle and watching too many episodes of Mr Ed.