your memories
Fifty years ago, children’s TV show Rainbow hit our screens – and we all soon became fond of a hyper loudmouth, a clumsy bear and an effeminate hippo
Popular ITV series Rainbow lasted far longer than any real rainbow, surviving in its original form from 1972 to 1992. It’s surprising when you think about the format: a man called Geoffrey who presided over a household consisting of a full-size talking bear called Bungle, a camp pink hippo called George and Zippy, an undefined child-like being, whose mouth had a readymade zip on it that could be deployed to shut him up.
Bizarre as he was, Zippy was always the most popular Rainbow character. Zippy, George and Bungle’s child-like behaviour and squabbles would, in reality, have seemed reassuringly familiar to many of the children watching.
Rainbow started when Thames TV producer, Patricia Lonsdale, was given a project: try to recreate the success of US series Sesame Street on a budget. Sesame Street had been bringing together humans, Muppets and occasional animated sequences to entertain and educate since 1969. Rainbow aimed to do the same.
It took a while to get there, however. Early plans envisaged the show being called Fish and Chips with a human presenter accompanied by an early version of Bungle, then called Rainbow, and with Zippy as just one of a family of characters each with zips in different places. Even when the first series of Rainbow arrived in October 1972, it was not quite Rainbow as most of us would come to know it. There was no George; Bungle looked scarier than he did later and the presenter for the first two series was David Cook, an actor and writer. In 1974, Cook left Rainbow, tipping off his friend, a semi-regular actor in Z-Cars, that a presenting job was about to become available. His friend was Geoffrey Hayes. He took on the job, little realising it would become the defining experience of his life.
‘Uncle Geoffrey’ was a natural in the role
Things began to fall into place. Amiable though occasionally exasperated, Geoffrey – occasionally referred to as ‘Uncle Geoffrey’ by the other characters – was a natural in the role. John Leeson quit as Bungle and was replaced by Malcolm Bates who was given a nicer costume. “We suddenly looked at him and thought how wrong he was,” Patricia remembered.
“We wanted a warmer, funnier character.” George the hippo joined the team and though they often seemed almost to be talking over each other during their frequent arguments, he and his puppet companion, Zippy, were in fact voiced by the same man, Roy Skelton, from this point onwards.
The dream team finally in place, Rainbow became a familiar sight on children’s TV for the rest of the decade and throughout the Eighties. Animated interludes came from Cosgrove Hall, which created Dangermo
