avast there,kiddies

WHY do the confectionery companies keep messing about with our favourite childhood sweeties?

For decades, the singers on the Milky Bar commercials chanted "Nestles" (to rhyme with "wrestles"), then they suddenly contracted an acute vowel disorder and changed it overnight to "Ness-Lays."

Sweet cigarettes have been banished by the health lobby, Marathon bars were rechristened Snickers, and even Opal Fruits have changed their name to Starburst (although, judging from the size of some of the people who eat them, they should have been called Uranus Drops).

As for Peanut Poppets, they seem to have disappeared altogether, which is a pity, because their existence used to enable me to play trick, by offering bowls of unsalted peanuts to friends at parties. Then, once they were all happily munching away, I'd quietly say to them, "actually, you're doing me a favour, because the dog ate my false teeth, so all I can do now is suck the chocolate off the Poppets".

However, it's no great surprise that Funny Faces ("hey, hey, hey") ice lollies have been discontinued, because their endomorphic heads looked remarkably like those of Down's Syndrome sufferers, and disabled organisations doubtless disapproved. Yet their influence lives on in Yoho Ahoy! (BBC2), preschool animation series whose principal characters share much the same hydrocephalic demean-our, with some resembling melting Daliesque babies, while others could double for the alien in the Roswell Incident.

SET aboard the Rubber Duck (a three-masted vessel reminiscent of Captain Pugwash's mighty cardboard schooner), the script consists entirely of two words (you guessed it, "yoho" and "ahoy") and, given the predominance of pink on the ship (ropes, doors, grates, even barrels), and crew members called Poop, Bilge, and Booty (all eating fairy cakes), I initially found myself wondering just what sort of a vessel this might be. Was it, perhaps, a fore- and-after, where a young and eager matelot might work his passage, and where an unlucky cox might get his rollocks caught in another sailor's hawsehole?

But the episode I watched yesterday morning (Buzz with Jones, which deservedly won the animation category at the Banff 2001 Film Festival) soon set my mind at rest, with its blend of innocent charm and gentle didacticism.

Using stop-frame techniques, it told the story of Booty and Poop, who couldn't enjoy their cakes because mice kept nibbling at them, and of Jones the Handyman, who wanted to relax in a cool breeze, but couldn't get his bellows to work by themselves.

Having only two words with which to converse, the sailors inevitably had difficulties in formulating a communal plan of action, and to make matters worse, a bee kept flying around, and didn't seem to fit in with anyone.

Well, he was computer-generated, while the crew were all stop- frame puppets, so it's not really surprising that he didn't get on with them, and that everyone became animated in very different ways.

However, necessity is the mother of all clichs, and the crew soon realised that they could solve their problems by sharing their resources.

Jones began explaining his master plan ("yoho ahoy"), and I tried out my own recent invention, switching on the humidifier and dehumidifier in my office, and creating a black hole which enabled me to travel through time and space. Well, it was either that or the fumes from my magic marker pen, but I know that I definitely spent some time yesterday as a one-legged comfort geisha in Korea in the 1950s,and by the time I 'd returned to my own era,the crew had triumphed.

Jones used the bellows to suck off the bee,then the three sat enjoying their cakes in the breeze,having cunningly tricked the mice into operating the bellows.How did they do that?Easy.I 'll explain in two words.Yoho.Ahoy.

ALTHOUGH there was too much cheap sampling on the music soundtrack (a few recording sessions with living, breathing musicians would have amply repaid the investment), this is clearly a series with as much international potential as the Teletubbies, as BBC Worldwide (the SS division of the corporation) is already proving. It may make use of some modern digital effects, but its basic modus operandi is still refreshingly old-fashioned,in the grand British tradition of string,plastic nd bits of nylon fur,ll brought to life in potting shed by a couple of chaps with imagination nd Bolex,in the manner of Captain Pugwash or Sooty.

The result is as naive and innocent as Pugwash too,and I should make it clear that all those vile and discredited rumours about the captain 's crew having filthy names (Roger the Cabin Boy,Seaman Staines,Master Bates)were quite untrue,although I 've always suspected that there 's something lewd about Sooty.After all,if you simply hold your hand in the air and wiggle your fingers about, what have you got?Precisely.

Sooty totally naked.

Copyright 2001
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