Stephen,i think there was a colourised version released a few years ago on dvd,but it was only in b and w originally.

Edited to add,with Tim Burton releasing Frankenweenie in b and w,maybe you could use that as a lure into the world of black and white.

Fireball XL5 is my earliest memory of watching TV, circa 1966.

As always, wonderful opening and closing music by Barry Gray. Sylvia "Venus" Anderson provided a number of voices for the Supermarionation series of course, but I believe Robert the Robot was Gerry's only role as a voice artist.

I can't let an opportunity go by to share some lovely Mike Noble artwork so here's a 1965 TV21 page:

and a lovely piece that I think was a commission:

Lovely art Robbie!

It`s been in the media this week that Russel Crowe and his wife Danielle are divorcing,it was her dad Don Spencer that sang the theme tune.

Always got a kick seeing the ship taking off.

Years later, when the Apollo missions finally got my attention, I didn't get why the ships had to take off so inelegantly.

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I enjoyed Noble's work on the FIREBALL strip, but I would have gladly sacrificed some of my less indispensable body parts to have seen Frank Bellamy take a crack at that ship!

Frank would have done it much like his Thunderbirds  in TV21.

I agree that a Bellamy XL5 could have been something special. His Zero X could have been interesting as well. It's a shame in a way that there wasn't more swapping of the "big three" in TV21 - Bellamy, Embleton and Noble. I'd love to have seen Noble on Thunderbirds, if only for one story.

The Frank Bellamy Checklist blog has this cover credited to him which is probably the only example of his Fireball, if he did indeed do the whole cover. I can see his style in Thunderbird 2 but I'm not so sure about Stingray.