Mr. Squiggle and Friends

Mr. Squiggle is a marionette with a pencil for a nose, who visits his friends from his home at 93 Crater Crescent on the Moon, flying in his pet rocket (named Rocket). In every episode he would create several pictures from "squiggles" sent in by children from around the country. Mr Squiggle is a cheery, scatter-brained character who is often distracted and occasionally goes for "space-walks", leading his assistant to calm him down and get him to focus on the task of drawing. Mr. Squiggle was helped by a human assistant in all of the show's incarnations; they included Miss Gina (Gina Curtis) - as part of ABC Children's TV Club (1957), Miss Pat (Pat Lovell), Miss Jane (Jane Fennell), and later series featured Roxanne (Roxanne Kimmorley) and Rebecca (Rebecca Hetherington, Hetherington's daughter). Other puppet characters that appeared in the show included: Blackboard, the grumpy blackboard that Mr. Squiggle uses for an easel, whose catchphrases are "Hurrry up", "Hmmph", "Double hmmph" and "Booorrriing". Gus the Snail, who had a television set for a shell and later, a flower pot, often tells "Knock, Knock" jokes. Bill the Steam Shovel, who likes to tell corny jokes and belches steam out of his "nose" when he laughs. Comedians Mikey Robins and Merrick Watts played one of the show's characters, Reg Linchpin, for a year from 1989 to 1990. Other notable guest performers on the show included actor Paul Chubb and magician Timothy Hyde. One well-known presenter, actress and film producer Patricia Lovell, AO, MBE died in 2013, at the age of 83.