Geoffrey Hayes dies aged 76

Yes, Rainbow was the only 12.10 show repeated at 4pm, on the other days it was the midday show. Of course, that meant for a few years it was on at the same time as Play School.

It's nice to hear how much Geoffrey enjoyed doing it, though there was an interesting story in the otherwise pretty useless Golden Age of Children's Television by Geoff Tibballs (the book that had to have a correction glued on one of the pages to apologise for repeating the urban myth about the names in Captain Pugwash). There's a bit about how, before Matthew Corbett took over Sooty full-time, he combined acting with helping out his dad part-time, and got a part in Z Cars where he worked alongside Geoffrey. It says in the book Geoffrey repeatedly took the piss out of him all day for doing kids' telly, and then of course a few years later Matthew got a job on Rainbow and when he turned up there was Geoffrey.

As the obituaries point out, though, Geoffrey realised it was regular work that paid decently and clearly he went on to love being on kids' TV. It's a bit like Stuart McGugan who combined Play School with It Ain't Half Hot Mum, and when I interviewed him for Offthetelly years ago, he said that he once signed up for a week on Play School before It Ain't Half Hot Mum said they wanted him in the same week, and they said they'd buy him out of his Play School contract. But then he heard nothing more about it so went off and did Play School, and when he got back they told him they actually couldn't afford to buy him out because the Play School fee was too high. And he said after that he felt he got a bit more respect now everyone knew how much he was earning.

He said that people used to ask him why he wasted his time on Play School and he'd say "Five shows and five repeats every month", and then they'd ask him if he knew of any jobs going.

I've had so many arguments with people over that, people who are insistent they watched the show with those questionably named characters, you can't tell them otherwise.

Probably comes from the fact that one of the characters was called Willy and another was called Master Mate which - when spoken in Captain Pugwash's nasally voice sounded a lot like Master Bates.

For all the talk of regular work and repeat fees, Rainbow's sudden disappearance when Thames lost its franchise can't have been great for Geoffrey's finances - and there was me back in 1993 thinking all the student union stuff was merely a sudden upsurge in affection for the show!

Glad he was able to look back on it all with the same affection and humour as his viewers.

Turns out he'd bought the Bungle outfit in the early 2000s: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/2153373.stm

Amazing, Rob. Fitting tribute to Geoffrey.

I find it suprising Rainbow didn't continue on past 1992 (bar a couple of half arsed revivals with a different format years later anyway) considering its popularity, but I guess the ITV network centre and the new companies wanted something different (and of their own, not a former franchisee). Meridian made (well, commissioned anyway) a lot of kid's TV after all, shows like Wizadora and Tots TV that sort-of filled the gap.

Obviously a lot of long running Thames shows ended after 1992 anyway, not just Rainbow, like Shelley and This Week (the latter of which dated back to Rediffusion), and This Is Your Life went to the BBC after one post- Thames ITV series.

To be fair (The Return Of) Shelley was nowhere near as good as the original series and the final series was very poor

ITV was going through a phase of phasing out their news and current affairs as even World In Action didn't last much longer and were both eventually replaced by Tonight with Trevor McDonald which was originally twice weekly, in the same slots as Word in Action and This Week. Also lets not forget that This Week was a more recent incarnation as it was the successor to TV Eye, which, in turn, was a very different beast to the original This Week.

Also lets not forget that many Thames programmes did continue after they lost their franchise such as Minder, The Bill, Wish You Were Here? for example.

Sorry to be an atrocious pedant but when Tonight began it wasn't twice a week - it on Thursdays at ten for an hour, because it was supposed to be a British equivalent of 60 Minutes, but it never really caught on in that slot. Then when they brought back News at Ten, they decided that after News at Ten would be too late, and so It became a twice weekly half hour instead.

This Week was replaced by other current affairs shows, but at 7.30 opposite 'stEnders rather than at 8.30 which gave the Beeb a really cushy slot. The Big Story from Carlton was the main show in this slot, but it alternated with Yorkshire's 3D and some short-lived series. But they were all abandoned by the time Tonight began in 1999.



Tots TV was actually a Carlton production, and was pretty much the full-time replacement for Rainbow. Of course it's not to say that even if Thames had continued Rainbow would have still have been running for much longer - Play School was still popular enough when that ended, but it was generally thought they needed something different, and Rainbow had been running almost as long as that show.

Thames obviously benefited from the requirement by the ITV companies to commission 25% of their output from indies, and of course ITV certainly wanted to hold on to all of Thames' big, popular shows. But obviously Carlton wanted to make their own impact, and as the biggest franchise on ITV they would have been expected to make their own flagship shows in areas like current affairs and kids TV, not just carry on Thames' old ones.

Speaking of Tots TV...

The abandoned Tots TV house

Geoffrey and the old Rainbow gang did pop up again a few years later.