Rainbow

RAINBOW
Made by: Thames TV
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1971-92

Theme tune: "Up above the streets and houses, rainbow climbing high/Everyone can see it smiling all over the sky/Paint the whole world with a rainbow"

Rainbow is one of the longest-running children’s television shows of all time, and it was originally an attempt to emulate the spectacular success of Sesame Street across the pond. Geoffrey Hayes was the presenter who endured more than any man should have to, and he supposedly lived in a house with a bear, a hippopotamus and…well…a Zippy. Bungle was the unfeasibly camp bear (or man-in-a-bear-costume), who liked wearing tutus and prancing around like the drama queen that he was. George the puppet hippo was also lacking in obvious testosterone, and with his pink skin and long, curly eyelashes, he prompted many accusations that he was actually a girl. Then there was Zippy, a yellow loudmouth puppet who, with his zip mouth, looked like some kind of S&M nightmare. Zippy was an incessant talker, which made his zip very handy - he was also known to fart in the bed that he shared, perfectly innocently, with George and Bungle. Delightful. Ray Skelton provided the voices for both George and Zippy, the latter of whom he based on an amalgamation of Margaret Thatcher and Ian Paisley, and he -incredibly - used to do them simultaneously, which often meant arguing with, and interrupting, himself. Enough to make you schizophrenic.

Rainbow also had an infamous musical troupe, called Rod, Jane and Freddy, who were the worst kind of children’s entertainers. When they begun in the early seventies, they were all long-haired and strummed guitars, and looked like they were on The Old Grey Whistle Test, but when the eighties hit, they hit hard. The line-up changed over the years (Sooty’s Matthew Corbett was one of a number of Freddies), but settled eventually with Rod Burton, Jane Tucker and Freddy Marks, who looked as though he had a few burgers before each show. They dressed in dungarees, sung inane songs, and frolicked around in a manner unacceptable even for someone thirty years their junior. They were an embarrassment to watch, even for three year olds. Actually, I always found the whole thing rather juvenile, and felt faintly sorry for Geoffrey, putting up with a trio of ridiculous dummies…not to mention George, Zippy and Bungle.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 3/10

The Raggy Dolls

THE RAGGY DOLLS
Made by: HTV
Shown on: ITV
Years shown: 1988 onwards

Theme tune: "Raggy Dolls, Raggy Dolls, dolls like you and me/Raggy Dolls, Raggy Dolls, made imperfectly/So if you’re not at ease with your nobbly knees/And your fingers are all thumbs/Then stand on your two left feet/And join our Raggy Doll chums."

Suffering the same fate as Superted, the Raggy Dolls were what are politely known as factory seconds - in short, someone or something screwed up when they were being made. As a result, they resided in a factory crate (which they returned to in the closing titles) in Mr Grimes’ factory, and clamber out when no-one was watching, in order to participate in daring exploits in the big, wide world. In this idealistic cartoon, narrated by Neil Innes, there were a number of misfit playthings, who were all slightly flawed, but each had skills valuable to the group as a whole, and were therefore loved and valued. You can see what they were getting at here. Anyway, there was Back-to-Front, whose head and feet pointed in the opposite direction to the rest of his body; Claude, whose only fault seemed to be that he was French (understandable, from a British point of view); the dizzy Dotty; Hi-Fi, who wore a massive Walkman and a white vest, in the manner of most eighties roller-skaters; Lucy, the sensible member of the gang; Princess, who was intended to be stunningly beautiful, but ended up looking more like a pre-ball Cinderella; and finally, Sadsack, the melancholy big fella, who looked like a sack of potatoes. The Raggy Dolls were like a British version of The Get-Along Gang, minus about eight tons of saccharine and four kilos of cuteness, which made it bearable after-school fodder.

SQUARE EYES RATING: 6/10

(Thanks to markmasonanimation.co.uk for the borrowed pic)