Around the World with Willy Fogg

AROUND THE WORLD WITH WILLY FOGG
Made by: BRB International
Shown on: BBC1
Years shown: 1983 onwards
Theme tune: “Eighty days around the world/We’ll find a pot of gold just sitting at the rainbow’s ending…” (and then some other less comprehensible lyrics)

Based, of course, on Jules Verne’s fictional adventures of upper-class English playboy, Phileas Fogg and his butler Passeportout, some French loon had the bright idea of recasting the story with talking animals. This time around, Willy Fogg is a sharp-suited lion, who is bet £10,000 by a wheelchair-bound old goat (yes, literally), Lord Guinness, that he can’t make it round the world in 80 days. He is joined in his travels by his faithful manservant, Rigadon the beaver (?), and the Spanish mouse, Tico, who seems to live in Rigadon’s hat. They are pursued throughout by Transfer, always introduced as ‘the Insidious Transfer’, who had the ability to disguise himself as anything he fancied - except that his glowing red eyes were always a bit of a give-away. The whole thing was a bit tiresome, and culminated in the thrilling ‘cliff-hanger’, where Fogg thinks he has lost the bet until he realises that they ‘lost’ a day when crossing the international dateline, and have therefore reached London within the set time. Hurrah! One other noteworthy character was Romy, the Indian princess who Fogg bravely rescues and then falls in love with; she is a cat, but is somehow the same size as Fogg, a lion. Willy Fogg was diverting enough, but not as good as Dogtanian, which must have sprung from the same crazed minds. People who watched Children’s BBC at the time must also remember ‘broom-cupboard’ presenter Andy Crane’s pointless obsession with the theme-tune, to the point where he produced a lyric sheet for kids to send off for. As if anyone else really cared.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 5/10

(Thanks to the Watched It! website for the borrowed pic)