The Wombles

THE WOMBLES
Made by: Filmfair
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1973-75 (original series), plus repeats

Theme tune: “Underground, over-ground, wombling free/The Wombles of Wimbledon Common are we/Making good use of the things that we find/Things that the everyday folk leave behind.”

With scripts by Elizabeth Beresford, and narration by Bernard Cribbins, The Wombles is quite rightly won of the most beloved of British television programmes. They were a group of furry creatures who lived on Wimbledon Common, and collected and recycled litter that the park-users discarded. Fortunately for the government, their popularity coincided with a national Keep Britain Tidy campaign.

The patriarch of the operation was Great Uncle Bulgaria, who had named each of the young ones after an obscure place on his world map: Tobermory (in the Scottish isles), Orinoco (an Amazonian river), Wellington (a city in New Zealand), Bungo (Bungo-Suido is a strait in Japan), and Tomsk (in the former USSR.) Madame Cholet (named after a town in France) was the resident mother-figure, and doled out the chores to everyone, while she got on with the housework. Tobermory was the handyman, Tomsk was the greedy food-obsessive, Wellington was the clever one and wore glasses to prove it, Bungo was an idiot, and Orinoco was an even bigger idiot. Lots of children could identify with Orinoco because he always tried to bunk off his work, and was a eternal scruff-bucket.

The Wombles were sweet without being sickly, there was enough in it for adults to be kept amused for its duration, and the theme was great - except that I thought that the lyrics implied that the Wombles were from Wimbledon and they were common, not that they were from Wimbledon Common. In 1974, The Wombles’ were hijacked by writer and producer Mike Batt, and went on to have a number of hit records, the most recent in December 2000. Remember-member-member what a Womble Womble Womble you are….

SQUARE EYES RATING: 8/10

(Thanks to www.scuzz.com for the borrowed pic)