Humour In Old 'Watch With Mother' Shows

[TJ]

Something that I've noticed a lot recently; subtle jokes (not the crude innuendo kind as twats like Ricky Gervais would have you believe were rampant, but odd pieces of slapstick and verbal wordplay) in old BBC and ITV animated kids' shows that must presumably have been there for the benefit of adults as they would have sailed over the heads of the target audience.

Some examples:

The Herbs: Bayleaf the Gardener denouncing a fellow herb named Birdbush as being "too common".

Trumpton: The Fire Brigade making a complete fuckup of an attempt to stick a bill poster to a wall, careering about like some sort of weird stop motion Keystone Kops and ending up with Cuthbert losing his balance and skidding down the ladder in a most hilarious fashion.

Pipkins: Hartley Hare accidentally glues a newspaper to his arms and is in obvious distress about this, whereas Pig simply cranes his neck round to try and read what's printed on it.

Barnaby: what can I say? The whole thing is like some demented surrealist lost Jacques Tati film (in parts, it actually made me think of "Belleville Rendezvous") with a singing, flying bear as the central character. Why isn;t this out on DVD?

Further thoughts?

[smoker]

Further thoughts?

you should get out more

;)

[TJ]

Further thoughts?

you should get out more

;)

Yeah, thanks for that. Now can you go away again please?

[alan strang]

DOUGAL IS ASLEEP IN HIS BED IN THE MAGIC GARDEN. THE CUCKOO CLOCK IS TRYING TO WAKE HIM UP

CLOCK
Dougal, if you don't get up, I'll spit!!

THE CLOCK DROPS ITS PENDULUM ON DOUGAL'S HEAD. HE WAKES UP WITH A START, VERY CONFUSED

DOUGAL
What? What? What? What?? Man the lifeboats! Ban the bomb! The dam's burst! Is me nightie on fire? Vote Conservative! Keep Off The Grass! What? What? What? What??

CLOCK
Don't get confused, my lovely!

DOUGAL
Oh, it's you! I might have known! I'll nail your doors together one of these days, if you're not careful. Ohhh! Ohh, you're so hearty!

(Dougal And The Blue Cat)

[TJ]

Ah, "Dougal And The Blue Cat". Tons of humour in that...

"We go we go we go, to thump, pillage and burn
We go we go we go, to give people a turn
Our king is the best, we go we go we go
We go we go we go, let none challenge our might!
We go we go we go, to turn day into night
Our King is a cat, we go we go we go
We go we go we go, we go we go we go
We go we go we go, we..."

"Well? Go then!!!"

[butnut]

Is that Buxton the Blue Cat, the feature-length episode?

I remember really liking that - and it had that lovely song 'Florence it's a lovely morning'

[alan strang]

and it had that lovely song 'Florence it's a lovely morning'

Indeed. I love the way Eric Thompson introduces the musical bits by saying "They sang a song, which went... something like this..." - and then proceeds to sing a very intricate and imagery-heavy song in the most unambiguous way possible.

Mark Kermode used to namecheck it all the time when he did the movie slot on Mark Radcliffe's Radio 1 shows. It got to be a bit of a joke by the end. He also used to put unnecessary emphasis on the word 'Blue' in the title (as if we were meant to infer that it was part of a series - 'Dougal And The Yellow Cat', 'Dougal And The Puce Cat', etc).

I saw a print of the film at a little arts cinema years ago. It was more cellotape than celluloid - jumps and dropouts all over the place. Still great though.

[Jemble Fred]

Still not seen the Blue Cat movie, unbelievably, but that Magic Roundabout tape what I sent you has some classic stuff, TJ...

They then came upon a pear, doing a little dance.

'I'm not a pear, I'm a quince!'

'A quince?'

'Yes. But today's my day off.'

'If it says its name Ada I shall strike it!' said Dougal.

'How did you know?'

Often wondered whether the sniggering is genuinely Thompson's own. Very contagious.

[TJ]

Still not seen the Blue Cat movie, unbelievably, but that Magic Roundabout tape what I sent you has some classic stuff, TJ...

It certainly has! I've got Dougal And The Blue Cat, but unfortunately no video capture facilities. Not quite sure why there isn't a DVD of it at present.