What is the first thing you think of when someone mentions the name ‘Hamble’? Hampshire’s famous River Hamble, which is tidal for approximately half its length and navigable in its lower reaches? Perhaps its close geographical neighbour Hamble-Le-Rice, the popular yachting mecca as proudly featured in BBC TV’s Howards’ Way? How about Fairey Aviation’s pioneering early Twentieth Century single-seat fighter seaplane the ‘Hamble’?
No, chances are you think of an ugly plastic doll. ‘Hamble’ was, and is, most widely recognised as the peculiarly awkward monicker bestowed on one such ugly plastic doll as featured for over twenty years in the BBC’s absurdist combination of White Void Studio-delivered songs and stories and failed or failing folkie singer-songwriters and stand-up comics, Play School. Blessed with neither the pop-art colour schematics of her plusher pals Jemima and Humpty, nor the sturdily-upholstered stiff upper lip of Big Ted and Little Ted (or indeed their earlier counterpart, the budget-conscious mono-sized catch-all ‘Teddy’), Hamble stood out like, well, an ugly plastic doll in a cast of toys that you might actually want to own yourself. She was nobody’s favourite – even the presenters hated her – and yet, doubtless due to her sheer incongruity, she’s as well remembered as any other icon from children’s television of yesteryear.
Here, then – because nobody else will ever tell it, and rightly so – is ‘her’ story.
Hamble was intended by the production team as a nod towards recognition of the lower end of the social spectrum, kind of like a sort of ugly plastic doll equivalent of Duquan from The Wire. To this end, they eschewed the usual practice of specially comissioning the relevant prop and opted instead to simply purchase a mass-produced Queen-faced stubby-limbed bird’s-nest-haired jointed plastic doll from Woolworths, even retaining its original retail name for additional Down With Da Kidz-ness. This, excitingly, meant that any child watching could own their own Hamble and identify with all the songs about her going to the grocers (and what did she buy there?) just that little bit more. Except that no child watching wanted to own their own Hamble, what with her being utterly devoid of character and looking even more hideous under the glare of studio lights, opting instead for the hopelessly desperate policy of renaming their own disparate-looking bears in honour of Big Ted and Little Ted, and wondering why nobody saw fit to mass-produce Humpty or Jemima.
And it wasn’t just the viewers who detested Hamble. The show’s presenters were just as full of loathing, with the added advantage of being able to physically do something about it. Tales are told of recording being interrupted when the hapless doll was subjected to obscene pen and ink anatomical additions, hoisted aloft on a noose, and impaled on a knitting needle (as punishment for failure to remain upright for the duration of a take), and sometimes the violence inflicted upon it was so severe that sufficient damage was sustained to warrant emergency admission to the nearest Doll’s Hospital. By this time, mass production of the ‘Hamble’ had long since ceased, and the BBC were unable to locate a duplicate to function as an illness-covering Stunt-Hamble. To this end they hired an identical example from a doll collector, who loaned her prized grotesquery for extortionate sums, though clearly anyone in their right mind would have paid to have Hamble taken off their hands, and indeed any production team in their right mind would have taken any excuse to ditch the unpopular horror. Their refusal to do so can only really strengthen the beliefs of the smaller subset of child viewers who believed – not entirely unreasonably – that Hamble was ‘evil’ and disseminating coded messages to Charles Manson through the medium of films seen through differently-shaped windows, and as such had some sort of sinister hold over the production team. Meanwhile, overseas purchasers of Play School in infamous ‘kit’ form wasted no time in ditching Hamble and crossing her name out of the provided scripts, though it has to be said that even this treatment pales next to the curious insistence of the Swiss on nailing Humpty down.
Few tears were shed when, in 1983, as part of an overall Play School overhaul that also introduced zany knockabout comedy, updated theme music and, but of course, “Flying Pickets-style ‘psh-psssssssssssh!’ percussion”, Hamble was ditched and replaced with inclusivity-slanted ethnic doll Poppy. And it’s in this later Poppy-equipped lineup that the toys now reside in the National Media Museum in Bradford, with the whereabout of the original Hamble troublingly unknown (though rumours persist that it is currently held on Level 5 of Primatech Research). Meanwhile, surviving examples of retail-purchased Hambles occasionally surface on eBay, where they routinely change hands for upwards of £100. Never did the phrase ‘more money than sense’ seem more worryingly apposite.
This is just a quick bit of inter-BBC-cloth-prop-pondering filling in to say that if you haven’t already been listening to the new series of Just Impolite, the weekly ten-minute topical comic Thoughts Of Chairman Ben Baker, then you should take immediate steps to rectify that situation forthwith. You can download the second episode, which takes a lengthways look at Doctor Who, Private Eye, I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here, Nick Griffin, Russell Brand, Gordon Brown’s linguistic prowess, the postal strike, and new DVDs rush-released for the Christmas market, here. If you’re sufficiently intrigued you can download the first by going to internet’s popular Mostly Spellings. And if you want to hear the third one, you’ll need to do so through the time-bending shenanigans of one Peter Petrelli. “Onwards and ha ha ha” – Richard Herring, Bin.
No, this isn’t going to be yet another of those postings where the author announces that they’re going to stop posting for a while and signposts this with an hilarious pastiche of Test Card F wherein the girl’s face is replaced by that of Scatman John or somesuch. No siree, Out On Blue Six would never resort to such a cliched tactic, and anyway, as everyone knows, whenever there’s going to be no posts for a while because of mentals getting angry about people laughing at half hour comedy shows and how New Doctor Who is full of gay agenda not like good old Meglos, this is invariably heralded by a stroppy message, a picture of some obscure Francoise Hardy EP, and Catherine Tate taking over for a week. Instead, in the popular Out On Blue Six tradition of surreally ridiculing ancient TV continuity devices, it’s time to take a look at some of the more bizarre variants of Test Card F, with illustrations provided as ever by our old pals at TV Ark:
The original and, depending on how you look at it, best! Yes, it’s weirdly-dressed Carole Hersee and her unsettling gaudy-assembly-of-primary-colours pal Bubbles (“this shit ain’t right, sir”) poised immobile in their Seventh Seal-esque unending game of noughts and crosses, rightly revered for their spooking of entire decades’ worth of youngsters who had accidentally turned on before TV ’started’ and couldn’t understand what in the name of Sara & Hoppity this weird programme actually was, and looking exactly how you try not to remember it. But hang on a minute…
What madness is this? Granada?? It seems that our favourite fear-causers are not content with their hold over the unwary BBC audience, and have decided to implement a ‘no escape’ policy and branch out by taking the ITV regions by force. Like some crazy Murders McFadden & Whitehead, there Ain’t No Stoppin’ Them Now…
Onto something slightly less terrifying, then. Just as the BBC used to sell Play School in ‘kit’ form to overseas broadcasters, so they could refashion the props and scripts to suit their own purposes and dye Humpty in ‘poison’ colours etc, so they would strike similar deals with Test Card F, allowing our global compatriots to opt for slightly less chilling combinations of girl/clown. Here’s how Sweden’s Sveriges TV, famous makers of Xerxes, interpreted the classic design, incorporating a girl who appears to have stolen the top half of her wig from Ken Korda and the bottom half from Pat Sharp, and what is very clearly a discarded Hamble from their own concurrent Play School purchase.
Meanwhile, here’s a more thoughtful and spiritually-leaning interpretation from MBC, the curious Arabic cable channel of the early nineties that only seemed to show about three programmes at a million o’clock in the morning, all of which appeared to have been made in the same room. Also, someone came down the chimney on one once.
Over on The Comedy Channel, being somewhat less concerned with meditative contemplation than they were with Bill Cosby putting all of the plates in the dish washer so that they can be of washed up for the lunch, they opted instead for a not-particularly-comedy-related shot of some goldfish swimming around a deep sea diver out of one of those ‘Bill’ and ‘Dean’-centric Fisher-Price Adventure Playsets. Mind you, it’s really only here in the absence of the legendary Test Card adopted by its spiritual heir Paramount Comedy for the conclusion of a hard day’s showing of endless variations on Greg fretting because Dharma couldn’t understand why she should let ‘them’ stop her from wearing sweaters as trousers – an utterly bewildering photo of a giant chicken standing astride a gridlocked ‘freeway’ of randomly flashing car lights with an Flaming Lips-like orchestra of elongated car horns sounding in the background.
And here’s BSB, early sattelite home of hour upon hour upon hour of nothing interspersed by clunking satire shows featuring the young Armando Iannucci and Stewart Lee (“BOO! HISS!”) and marathon showings of Doctor Who linked by writers who had lost the ability to say anything bar ‘Padmasambhava’, trying to lure in the overnight viewers with Sky Magazine’s idea of a ’sexy’ female posing as a director. Clearly a resounding success.
And finally, what you’ve all been waiting for – a station devoted exclusively to the showing of William Hartnell-era episodes of Doctor Who. Free Delegates For All!
Well, that’s about it for now, but why not treat yourself to an official Televisions Namnden Countdown Clock? Just give it a try and you’ll agree zagreb evrem zlotyk diev!
Yes, it’s the return of the big money trivia quiz that makes all other big money trivia quizzes look like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?, The Nation’s Biggest Ever Great Big Michael Parkinson Quiz. Will you attain the giddy heights of ‘journalist’, or languish in the lowly doldrums of ‘moaning about the cricket in rolled-up sleeves’? Just answer the ten questions below and you too can discover your very own Parky Rating(TM)…!
- Which of the following was not one of the ‘Famous Five’ that helped Parky launch TV-am – Anna Ford, Roland Rat, David Frost?
- What is the only known record ever to sample Michael Parkinson?
- What film was Meg Ryan ostensibly promoting when she famously blanked Parky?
- Which of the following was not a real Woofit: John Willie Woofit, Gaylord Woofit, Elton Woofit, Sendhil Woofit?
- Which of his notorious obsessions did Parky mention less than ten words into his supposed tribute to Bob Monkhouse: Billy Connolly, Jamie Cullum, Rod Stewart or ‘The Great American Songbook’?
- Who did Parky charmingly describe as “barely educated, ignorant, puerile… a woman who came to represent all that’s paltry and wretched about Britain today” within days of her death?
- After promising to appear on Parkinson in exchange for the moaning sod appearing on the cover of Band On The Run, how many years did ‘Dinners’ McCartney purposefully avoid having to fulfil his obligation for?
- Which chat-show hosting rivals did Parky generously describe as a) “over-contrived… tries to make himself the star of the show”, b) “cheap and silly”, c) “a pair of plastic boobs”?
- And which rival chat show host did Parky ban from his chain of pubs after they made a light-hearted joke about him on air?
- “you’ve been fantastic, enthusiastic”… who had, exactly?
Yes indeed, it’s that time again, and in honour of this momentous occasion, Out On Blue Six presents five amazing facts you never knew about Britain’s favourite defunct provider of third rate sub-Amicus/Hammer horror flicks:
- despite winding down operations in 1976 for absolutely no suspect reasons whatsoever and subsequently having a nice day out at the seaside with a vicar (we will of course not be naming the vicar), the Tyburn Films name was briefly revived in 1984 for a project entitled Batty!, a movie based on the incident in which popular puppet rodent Roland Rat was hit with a cricket bat; this failed to get off the ground when the film was seized before production as a ‘Video Nasty’, though it was later released as a blank disc in a box set of former Nasties alongside Threads: Just The Swearing, Ghostwatch Smeg-Outs and some bloody ITV wartime drama that even Network considered ‘too obscure’. Lawyers have asked us to emphasise that Tyburn Films were never involved with any prospective films about erstwhile celebrity puppets.
- in 1972 Tyburn Films were the recipient of a prestigious ‘Uncle’ award, given out by Fans Of The Silents in recognition of contributions to the genre, in response to their soundless presentation of Frank Zappa’s over-droned-on-about concert at the Royal Albert Hall where he phoned Mary Whitehouse and called her a “Swizzlewick silly” or something, which many noted was vastly improved in the absence of the audio track, though this has posthumously been withdrawn after it was discovered that the master tape was recently recorded over with the Supergrass ‘mockumentary’ Glange Fever, and the original was unable to be recovered even from an off-air recording retained by superfan Ian Levine. Lawyers have asked us to emphasise that Tyburn Films have never even met Frank Zappa and were on holiday when it wasn’t made.
- amongst numerous Tyburn Films projects that were abandoned during production were Mutiny On The Pipkins, Eli Culbertson Vs. Pterodactyls, The Furious Windcheaters!, Spangles Galore and The Waltham Green East Wapping Carpet Cleaning Rodent And Boggit Extermination Association Live At Somewhere They Couldn’t Fit This Billing Onto The Marquee. Lawyers have asked us to emphasise that Farewell To John Denver has been removed on legal advice (and also because it wasn’t funny).
- the Wikipedia page on Tyburn Films is one of the most rigorously maintained on the whole of the site; moderators waste no time in removing unverifiable claims that the company existed, operated in the early seventies and made films, while ensuring that vital information such as “Tyburn Films is not to be confused with Milburn, who worked in the cafe on Last Of The Summer Wine, which sounds a bit similar” is always present and correct. Lawyers have asked us to emphasise that [CITATION NEEDED].
- Sendhil Ramamurthy, TV’s Mohinder from Heroes, considers Tyburn’s output to be “full of exemplary acting”. Lawyers have asked us to emphasise “Sylar!” in a ’shocked’ voice.
Alright, tonight’s the night, we can’t wait any longer, we’re turning out the light and locking up that door! You might put up a fight, but you’ll be crying out for more, when you get given what you really came here looking for… the legendary proto-London-Boys-dancers-whose-heads-stay-in-the-same-place-while-their-bodies-move-around Top Of The Pops performance of Shakin’ Stevens’ inexplicable excursion into Hi-NRG (shortly before, lest we forget, his equally baffling Motown Phase) A Little Boogie Woogie (In The Back Of My Mind), a song that was famously laughably condemned by ridiculous eighties rentaquote comedy politician Geoffrey Dickens who wanted it banned for being “a bit near the knuckle”, and which still enjoys wide exposure despite raking in the readies for its composer, a certain Mr Paul Gadd…
It’s Halloween laughs galore as Ben Baker counts down The Top Ten Scariest Moments Of All Moments Time Ever (Halloweens) in The Just Impolite Halloween Special.
Because YOU demanded it – yes you, personally, and in writing - here at last is a fan art tribute to Michael Parkinson’s second finest hour (after The Woofits), Ghostwatch!
Honestly, they’ll make a ‘TV Movie’ of anything. Here, for your viewing pleasure, is a 1973 rendering of Go Ask Alice, the American Broadcasting Company’s visual rendering of that time-honoured playground-contraband paperback shocker ostensibly relating the Jefferson Airplane-refracted diarised recollections of a normal schoolgirl who gave into temptation and smoked that crazy acid, leading her down a dark path towards casual sex and seeing a table from lots of different angles at once. It’s full to bursting with esoteric confectionary that you only ever saw in advertising in imported DC and Marvel comics, brilliantly rubbish Top Of The Pops Album-like re-recordings of erstwhile Hits Of Psychedelia, Magic Garden Of Stanley Sweetheart-esque overuse of coloured tinting to indicate far-out hallucinatory ‘drug trip’ sequences, and as if all that wasn’t enough, a headlining appearance by none other than William Shatner (whose rendition of Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds sadly fails to make it to the soundtrack).
Judging from the IMDB, it seems there’s hardly a single book in print that hasn’t been adapted as a TV Movie at some point. Here’s to the imminent unearthing, then, of the small-screen cinematic versions of You Can Do The Cube, Robert Morley’s Book Of Bricks and The Doctor Who Technical Manual…
The personal sketchpad of writer and occasional broadcaster TJ Worthington, full of reviews, silliness and the odd bit of shouting. Feel free to stick around and enjoy the ramblings, but if you're going to sneer about grammar, scoff at people who enjoy popular TV drama, expound mental conspiracy theories or generally just act like a weird stalkerish freak, the rest of the internet is over there...
