The absolute very first time I watched Play School was, appropriately, when I was very young. I’d just finished working out which flowerpot man was to blame for various horticultural calamities (‘was it Bill or was it Ben?’) and suddenly I was thrown into the world of weird-shaped windows and a dysfunctional family of soft toys.
We all remember the opener: “Here’s a house, here’s a door, windows 1 2 3 4. Ready to play, what’s the day?" There was a pause before telling us the answer so that we could shout out ourselves....unless we had an older brother who would butt in and deliberately chirp up with the wrong day. At least I think it was deliberate.
All the presenters were legends - Derek Griffiths, Floella Benjamin, Johnny Ball (Zoe’s dad), Toni Arthur et al – but Brian Cant was the man. He was our Mr Play School. He was the Frank Bough of children’s TV for us. Frank used to live down the road from me but, as far as I know, Brian didn’t. Cant (my predictive text keeps wanting to change his name to can’t….but we all know that he absolutely could and did) beat Oliver Postgate to the title of Best-Loved voice on children’s TV. Oliver gave us Bagpuss & Ivor the Engine and so represented a formidable challenge but Brian had Trumpton, Camberwick Green & Chigley as well as Play School on his CV so came up trumps.
Apparently, Rick Jones – the slightly scary-looking bloke who stuck his finger up a mouse to create Fingerbobs and looked like the Master off Dr Who – used to smoke dope on the Play School set. Even cuddly Johnny Ball (prior to his Think of a Number gig) was prone to the odd on-air expletive when Ka-too, the imaginatively named cockatoo, bit him during a live segment. If it was a number he was thinking of, I’m pretty sure it must have been 'four'....or at least that's what it sounded like.
We weren’t allowed a story until we had managed to tell Brian & co what time it was on the giant clock and – they certainly made us work for it in those days - we were also forced to guess which window we were going to have the dubious pleasure of looking through. It was either the round, square or arched one (apparently there was a triangular one later which must have been confusing for any toddler in the 80s whose bedroom didn’t happen to be in the attic) but it didn’t really matter which was chosen because we always ended up seeing something being made in a factory, the signal for many of us to spend the following few minutes playing with our fuzzy felt or drawing flowers with our spirograph instead.
Besides the presenters, the real stars of the show were the soft toys. These were:
i) Big Ted & Little Ted – OK, no problem. Just standard teddy bears. Big one, small one. Nothing to see here – move on
ii) Jemima – I remember she had dreadlocks and pink/white striped leggings but her dresses looked like they'd been made out of whatever duster was left lying around the set after the cleaners had gone
iii) Humpty – a green Scottish egg. Now, this was starting to get a bit weird
iv) Hamble – oh my sweet Jesus. This was the devil doll. Apparently, Brian Cant used to kick her around the studio and Rick ‘Fingerbobs’ Jones used to….well, let’s not go there
It’s telling that, when you look at the overseas versions of the show, they stick pretty closely to the roster of toys used in the UK….with one notable exception every time. We may have been the world leader in children’s TV – the gold standard which every nation looked up to - but it’s fair to say that no other country took a gamble with Hamble.
There were so many dungarees sported by the various presenters that, at times, it looked like they were filming from Greenham Common. Many of them also moonlighted on the spin-off, Play Away, which I’d watch from time to time despite it being too grown-up for me. I mean it had Jeremy Irons presenting it for goodness sake! Even the theme tune sounded like a hit single which wouldn’t have seemed out of place on TOTP – in fact, compared to the Goodies’ Funky Gibbon and Chuck Berry’s My Ding-A-Ling, it was positively the height of sophistication (have a listen here).
Play School was the forerunner of Teletubbies, whose variously-shaped windows were housed somewhere between their heads and their chubby little furry legs. Mr Fingerbobs would’ve thought he was on a seriously-bad trip. Or perhaps a good one? The show itself was cancelled in 1988, soon after they ditched the windows and decided to refer to 'shapes' instead in some trendy revamp which resulted in everyone losing interest. Take note, Dr Who producers.
There were 5500 editions broadcast but the Beeb decided to wipe two thirds of those so it could preserve Kate O'Mara's ferry shenanigans on Triangle for posterity instead. At its height in the early 80s, the show attracted 5m viewers daily which was half as many as Dr Who at the time and nearly twice as many as it musters today. Just saying.
As for the presenters, Toni Arthur is now a Buddhist and Rick Jones sadly smoked his final spliff just a few weeks ago. Johnny Ball is still Zoe's Dad but, at 83, finds it a little more difficult to think of a number nowadays. His stint on Strictly Come Dancing turned sour when he accused his dancing partner of feigning a broken leg just to avoid tangoing with him. At least she didn't bite him.
Of them all, Floella Benjamin has arguably proven the most successful in post-Play School life. She's a Dame, a Lib Dem and has a statue erected outside the University of Exeter to celebrate her courage (presumably for openly admitting to being a Lib Dem). And, as for Brian, having received neither a gong from the Queen nor a statue from an educational establishment, he left us several years ago and went to look through those arched windows in the sky. Gone but never forgotten.
Goodbye, until it's our turn to be here again.
Next: ABSOLUTE VERY FIRST TIME...LIVE AID
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And remember the slightly more “grown up” sister programme “play away”?
Ha! Not sure that version ever made it to Play School. Brian must've blocked it. The only wobbly song I can find on Youtube is Derek Griffiths pretending to be a jelly after Carol Chell makes one which didn't set very well and so looks rubbish. She'd have been better off with 'here's one I made earlier'
As well as the factories through the window, I’m sure they often showed a dog running around. Not sure it did anything noteworthy, just ran round a park. The forerunner of the dross circulating on YouTube/TikTok I guess.
And what was the “Wibbly Wobbly walk” song doing in a kids’ show? Something about looking at the pretty girls and having a wibbly wobbly feeling in the morning IIRC?