CBBC Birthday thread

The right hand operated his mouth and the left operated his left hand, which was the only one which moved. However Otis' right hand could velcro to the left so it could move along with it if required. The set was designed to allow for the puppeteer. (also the shape of Otis' back was handy to disguise his 'helper')

I'm pretty sure Emlyn replaced Otis by the way.

Nowadays the puppeteers have long sun lounger type chairs to lie across behind the 'desk'.

Personally I wouldn't worry too much about spoiling illusions, I posted a link a long while back to a page showing Oucho being constructed. If that didn't shatter any illusions then I don't know what will This isn't a kids forum, and you're only shattering anything anyway if the puppeteer can be seen.

While we're on the subject of puppets and to broaden the discussion, how complicated is the Sooty puppet, really? I presume you just put him on your hand and hide behind the desk? Sooty started on the BBC (albeit not in a childrens BBC type slot) before moving to ITV so it's not that far off topic.

When I saw Otis being operated, the puppeteer, Dave Chapman, had a sort of cushioned piece of wood on castors which he sat/lie on.

The aardvark thing hung around the broom cupboard for years - once they'd worked out it was "tell that aardvark it's a wrap" on the closing sting they started getting people to write in about aardvarks. Here's Toby Anstis (from 1:21 in) talking about "aardvark anoraks"



It was slightly ironic that by the time they introduced an actual aardvark, they'd dropped the ident that inspired it!
There was another one with a voiceover saying "essential viewing coming up", which funnily enough never caught on in the same way.

Oh and Emelyn - yes he was Otis's replacement, wouldn't have surprised if they overlapped very slightly though to introduce him. It became clear pretty quick that he wasn't as good by a long shot and was relegated to the younger kids slots (including often doing the lunchtime intro on his own). He was quietly dropped just before the Sep 2001 relaunch...

I read an interview with Guy Lambert who produced Ed and Oucho, and lots of CBBC continuity for about 4 years before that, who said he'd been trying to get a puppet back in for years but had always been knocked back. I guess they figured it didn't fit with the noticeable ageing up/T4ification of the continuity style from 2002.

He also said that Ed was originally due to present against the CSO backdrop in TC12 but refused and wanted an actual set, which is how they ended up with the office idea as it was about all you could do in that space (which then led on to having a cactus plant as a puppet).

Only a couple of posts before posting that I was talking about Warrick Brownlow-Pike being both Oucho and Dodge, so the illusion had already been broken on the same page!

Did the line come before Otis or did Otis come before the line? If it was the former... why was that said?

I think the line was there from when they changed the music on the CBBC idents back in early 1992- a good 2 1/2 years before Otis!

Otis & Emlyn did overlap. I have vivid memories of it. He was, indeed, Otis' replacement and I remember Otis introducing him and interacting with him during some of the links. I think it was a very short period though; perhaps even as little as a week or so before Otis disappeared. Emlyn didn't seem to have much of a personality if I recall correctly and wasn't around all that long. That said, Otis was a bit of a wise ass. He was like that kid in school. You surely all remember that kid. Annoying.

Does anyone remember the 1997 era of the Breakfast Show? Looking at the Genome listings, I thought the programmes shown at 8.30am (like Lassie/The Legend of Prince Valiant) were shown as part of the Breakfast Show but I did find a Youtube clip which confirms that these were shown outside of Children's BBC and supposedly voiced by the continuity announcer. Did this practice carry on at all?

From what I remember, they showed the "See Hear Breakfast News"- which was a recording of the Breakfast News from earlier with sign language, then went straight into CBBC. I could be misremembering though!