Sunday afternoons after lunch (or sometimes during or before…) Pobs TV programme was on in our network TV area and was great!
My brother and I used to watch it because we found Pob’s strange way of talking hilarious. Supposedly the programme was for younger viewers – most of it certainly was below our interest levels – but it was funny so we watched it.
The way Pob talked was often a little like the Teletubbies – a kind of childs speak with mixed up words that weren’t pronounced properly. In fact it was interesting to note that one of the producers of Pobs programme was Anne Wood – who went on to create the Teletubbies! Anne Wood also made Rosie and Jim – though these were also puppets they spoke properly and were much more adult-like in their movements.
To tell you more about the programme – it was a children's television programme, broadcast on Channel 4 and the BBC in the UK between 1985 and 1990. It had 52 half hour episodes over that time and was presented by a puppet named Pob (played by puppeteer Robin Stevens), who lived in the TV screen. Every week at the start of the show Pop would blow on the TV screen, misting it up and writing his name (Though we always thought he was spitting on the screen – that’s what it looked like! – this was the 1980’s the era of punk, so it made sense…)
At the start of every programme a celebrity guest would usually find a thread wool attached to a garden gate or somewhere where they would find a label that would read:
If in my programme you would be, Wind the wool and follow me.
The special guest would follow the string eventually finding a second label;
Wind it slowly, wind it fast, A secret you will find at last.
and at the end of the episode they would find Pob's jumper at the end of the wool.
Guests on the show read like a “who’s who” of 1980’s celebrities, Roy Castle, Madhur Jaffrey, Brian Blessed, Toyah Wilcox, Hannah Gordon, Kathy Staff, Spike Milligan
In 2001 the show was voted number 60 in Channel 4's Top 100 Kids Tv Programmes – which was a surprise. So I watched some of it again – and its still funny! Unintentially so, but still funny!
Do You Remember Pob?
Do You Remember Pob?