Emu's Pink Windmill Show

EMU'S PINK WINDMILL SHOW
Made by: ?
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: mid 80s

Rod Hull and his feathered fore-arm appendage had a whole series of programmes, but this is the one that I can remember being on, when I was about eight. Even then I thought it was dire. Emu was a one-joke comedy act that was able to drag out every day for most of his working life, but who actually found it funny? The smallest of children knew that Emu wasn’t a real bird, and the fact that you knew that it was actually Rod Hull attacking the special guest only made you feel kind of sorry for him.

Anyway, I have no idea why it was set in a windmill (except that windmills have been put out of action in the same way Rod Hull should have been years before), and can’t honestly say why it was pink…although I have a few ideas. The mill was populated by a dozen or so stage-school brats (including young madam Naomi Campbell at one stage), who would leap, bound, trill and generally ham it up whenever they got a whiff of the camera’s presence. When somebody arrived at the windmill, they would all spring into formation and chime, “There’s somebody at the door! There’s somebody at the door!” Yes, it’s the CID. We’d like to know why this old man is keeping a bunch of pre-adolescents in a windmill with nothing for company but a tatty flightless bird puppet. Oh, and a witch. Who could forget Grotbags (Claire Davenport), dressed in black bin-liners and with garish green face make-up? For some reason, she was always trying to kidnap Emu, for which there can be no excuse unless, like us, she was desperate for the show to be cancelled. She often enlisted the help of her pet Croc - but then, the whole show was a crock, really.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 0/10

(Thanks to www.tvcream.org for the borrowed pic)