Playschool

PLAYSCHOOL Made by: BBC Shown on: BBC Years shown: 1964-88

"Ready to play? What's the day?!"

When Playschool was replaced with Playbus (Playdays, shortly afterwards), there was outcry from parents around the country, and rightly so. Nobody really wants to witness the termination of a great piece of popular culture, something that they grew up with, and watched day after day with their children as well. The great thing about Playschool was that it understood young children; it knew what kept their attention, what they found fascinating, and what they would be able to learn and understand. And it was fantastic fun too. It was, quite by accident, the first programme broadcast on BBC2 due to a power failure the previous night, which was to have hosted the grand unveiling of the new station.

Every episode was hosted by four presenters, two male and two female, chosen from a wealth and variety of talent. At the risk of sounding twice my age again, presenters of children’s TV today seem to be the product of a cloning project (all under 21, wearing bright trendy clothes, with a shelf-life of about six weeks), whereas Playschool presenters were real adults, and looked as though they could be your uncles and aunts. During the golden age of the show, you could be watching any combination from Johnny Ball, Floella Benjamin, Brian Cant, Carol Chell, Fred Harris, Carol Leader (the dads’ favourite), Derek Griffiths, and Don Spencer (an Australian ex-pat, who strummed a mean guitar, and had also written the theme song to Gerry Anderson’s Fireball XL5.)

There was a reassuring set pattern to Playschool. The presenters would begin by saying hello to the children watching, then they would see what was under the clock - whatever object was there would denote the theme of that particular show. Then there would be a make-and-do activity, where you always had to get a grown-up to help you with the scissors, followed by a song and energetic dance routine. The focus would then return to the clock because it was time for a lesson in telling the time (“the big hand is pointing to the twelve, so it is something o’clock”), but once you’d survived that brief educational bit, it was time to watch a video through either the round, square or arch window. The video was usually of a crayon-making factory, or a trip around a farm - a bit like a school trip really, but without the permission slips and packed lunches. Afterwards, there was pets corner, a veritable menagerie of long-suffering animals: there were Bit and Bot the goldfish (the least interesting, obviously), Buffy the rabbit, Lizzie the guinea pig, and K’Too the cockatoo, who was quite exotic to the average British child, and who bit Johnny Ball and made him swear on camera as a consequence.

The presenters had already broken the time-honoured rule about not working with children or animals, but they were a breeze compared to the Playschool toys. Surely there wasn’t a single child out there who coveted these slightly mildewed playthings? There was Jemima the rosy-cheeked rag-doll, described by Fred Harris as “an empty-headed bimbette”; Hamble, a very scary porcelain doll who looked vaguely Eskimo, and who used to be drop-kicked around the studio between filming; Humpty, a big, green, rotund thing in tartan trousers; and Big Ted and Little Ted, who just looked a bit morose. The original Big Ted was actually stolen and replaced with an impostor, which probably accounted for why Little Ted always looked quietly alarmed. Hamble, too, did not go the full course; she had always caused problems because she refused to sit up straight, necessitating Chloe Ashcroft to stick a knitting-needle up her backside to improve her posture, and in the PC 80s the satanic one was replaced by Poppy, a black doll.

The dolls may have been inanimate, but they weren’t very professional in their attitude; when Humpty plummeted off the seat for the fiftieth time, Johnny Ball memorably said, “It’s all right, he doesn’t get hurt. In fact, he quite enjoys it”; and when the whole lot of them refused to co-operate on camera, an exasperate Fred Harris yelled, “I can’t work with these amateurs!” The slightly manic Harris was a bit frightening at the best of times, but if that outburst had gone out on air, a nation of under-fives would have dissolved instantly into tears, in sympathy with the lovely toys.

And here, especially for all you nursery pop-pickers, is the all-time top ten songs in the Playschool Hit Parade:

1) Little Ted Bear (“from nowhere in particular”)

2) Well, Jemima, Let’s Go Shopping (“Are we walking? No, we’re hopping..”)

3) Follow the Bangalorey Man

4) Sing a Song of Mrs Twisty

5) Brush, Brush, Brush (“you mustn’t rush, rush, rush, when you clean your teeth in the morning…”)

6) Build it Up (“build it up, build it high..”)

7) Ride a Cock Horse (“to Banbury Cross, to see a fine lady ride on a white horse”)

8) How Do You Feel Today?

9) I Think I’ve Caught a Cold

10) Two By Two

SQUARE EYES RATING: 10/10

(Thanks to www.tvradiobits.co.uk for the borrowed pic)

Play Away

PLAY AWAY
Made by: BBC
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1971-1984

Play Away was essentially a spin-off of Playschool (see above), the premier entertainment programme for the discerning pre-schooler, and it focused almost entirely on singing and dancing routines. It was play-group for those who didn’t actually go to play-group. The presenters were mainly recruited from the parent show, Playschool, including Brian Cant and Carol Chell, and Jonathan Cohen was always there on the piano, leading the Play Away Players. A lot of the presenters, like Rick Jones, were actually classically-trained actors, and were more used to the Bard than ‘The Wheels on the Bus’. One such thespian was future Oscar winner Jeremy Irons, who made a number of appearances in the mid 1970s, as well as Julie Covington of 'Don't Cry For Me, Argentina' fame and Baldrick himself, Tony Robinson.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 5/10

(Thanks to www.bbc.co.uk for the borrowed pic)

Pinny's House

PINNY'S HOUSE
Made by: Smallfilms/Barn Productions
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1986

Narrated by Matilda Thorpe, this fairly dull series about two pin-sized dolls who lived on a mantelpiece was, sadly, the final collaboration between Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin. And also sadly, I can’t remember a thing about it.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

(Thanks to www.smallfilms.co.uk for the borrowed image)

Pigeon Street

PIGEON STREET
Made by: David Yates
Shown on: BBC
Years shown: 1982 onwards

Theme tune: “If you lived in Pigeon Street/Here are the people you could meet/Here are the people who would say hello, goodbye, hello, goodbye/Every day…”

Pigeon Street, narrated by George Layton, was one of the giants of children’s TV in the 1980s - even though there were very few pigeons to be seen. The residents of Pigeon Street were not your average neighbourhood, which probably won’t come as a great surprise. The person everyone remembers is Long Distance Clara, the long-haul truck driver with her own catchy song - she was ever so slightly sexy too, and her lucky husband was Hugo the Chef, who stayed at home in a very modern role-reversal. There was also Dr Glossop, bald as a coot, who lived with his wife and their son Gerald, and twin daughters Molly and Polly, with their lettered jumpers. The twins also had a memorable song and I’m going to have to recount it for you: “Molly and Polly are two of a kind/They look both the same when they’re seen from behind/But when they turn round, it’s easy to see/It’s Molly with an M, and Polly with a P”. Thank you, I’m here every Thursday.

Anyway, moving swiftly on, there was also Mr McAdoo, the pet shop owner, who always had a pencil behind his ear; Rose and Daisy, the dotty old women who liked keep-fit; Reg the park-keeper and his wife Doreen, who were keen on ballroom dancing; and Bob, the bike-shop owner, who looked like he might have been at Woodstock. Of course, there was the token black family, made up of William the window-cleaner, his wife Betty, and their adolescent son, Jim. Finally, there was a pair of elderly madmen called Mr Jupiter and Mr Baskerville. If you can’t deduce their hobbies from their names, Mr Jupiter was an amateur astronomer with a telescope and a dog called Flash, and according to the song “looks high” (mmm..); whereas, Mr Baskerville was an amateur sleuth with a magnifying glass and a dog called Watson, and he was inclined to “look low.” They were not, however, as those misleading lyric excerpts might suggest, a drug addict and a manic-depressive.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 8/10

(Thanks to www.jedisparadise.co.uk for the borrowed pic)