MR BLOBBY – "Mr Blobby"

Well, I don’t get to write about this anywhere on TPL, so here goes:

“Human Behaviour” by Bjork; “Cannonball” by the Breeders; “Her Jazz” by Huggy Bear; “Heart-Shaped Box” by Nirvana; “Call It What You Want” by Credit to the Nation; “Into Your Arms” by the Lemonheads; “Cherub Rock” by the Smashing Pumpkins; “Stutter” by Elastica; “Open Up” by Leftfield and Lydon; “Regret” by New Order; “What’s My Name?” by Snoop Doggy Dogg – these are just eleven 1993 singles, off the top of my head, that I would much rather be writing about here than “Mr Blobby” by “Mr Blobby” but that’s the way this story goes (“White Love” by One Dove). Only in Britain, and perhaps only at Christmas, would records like this have any chance of becoming a hit (“You’re In A Bad Way” by what was their name again?). Though not 1993’s last number one – that comes next – “Mr Blobby” did return to the top for the festive season (“The Gift” by INXS). It represents the first of the BBC’s highly profitable children’s brand maximisation, and prior to his extremely dubious resuscitation in Deal Or No Deal, the last triumph for the brand of Noel Edmonds.

Although he played no part in the writing or performing of the song, and only appeared in the video, Mr Blobby was the instantly identifiable mascot of Edmonds’ peak-time Saturday show Noel’s House Party; set in a fictitious country house named Crinkley Bottom to which various C-list celebrities would pay scripted weekly visits, the programme epitomised just how and why Edmonds was so easy to appeal to Middle England – those who believe in nineteenth-century good manners and manicured lawns, who chuckle at a lightweight double entendre but don’t want the boat rocked too wildly, whose idea of multiracial integration ends at the benign buffoon of a proto-Teletubby pink and yellow plaster cast which was Mr Blobby (note the song’s rather disagreeable racial double entendre of “Though he’s unconventional in hue”), whose toleration of anarchy and disorder was defined in its boundaries by Mr Blobby thrusting himself helplessly and causing slapstick wreckage around whatever room in which he happened to be standing, or thrusting. Perhaps the Blob also represented Edmonds’ own extremely belated response to the seventies ITV children’s show Tiswas, whose surrealistic and shameless custard pies and grunge-filled cages of baffled viewers’ parents stood out in stark contrast to the benign, patronising 1953 paternalism of Edmonds’ Multi-Coloured Swap Shop, playing on the BBC in direct (and losing) competition. Or to prove to himself that disaster could always be conquered (“Oh, Mr Blobby, when disaster strikes you never get depressed”) after a viewer was killed while preparing for a stunt on his eighties Saturday teatime programme The Late, Late Breakfast Show.

After a misleading and copyright-vaulting “Thus Spake Zarathustra” takeoff intro, the song, as such, is derived in equal measures from “Lily The Pink,” “The Bucket Of Water Song,” “There’s No One Quite Like Grandma,” Bombalurina and SAW in general; maybe there would have been a case for it had the KLF been covertly involved, but its ghastliness (“No bridge too far – he’s got a car!”) is thrown into even sharper relief when contrasted with something of genuine danger such as “Sesame’s Treet,” the Smart Es’ 1992 number two hardcore rave breakdown of guess which children’s programme theme tune. When performed on TOTP, in accordance with the programme’s then blanket rule that samples must be performed “live,” the band assembled a roughshod cast of young kids who danced and moped around the stage in complete anti-coordination, humming or trying to sing something which may have been either the Sesame Street theme or Noye’s Fludde. It looked and felt like real anarchy, and is one of the greatest of all TOTP performances. Whereas “Mr Blobby” with dreary eagerness seeks to maintain the status quo – and if this looks too hard a judgement on a record made specifically for young children, then the various signifiers scattered hurriedly through its duration (“if humanity’s a question of degree” etc.) suggest that its composers were engaged in a particularly hamfisted act of pseudo-subversion.

(“Mmm…Skyscraper, I Love You” by Underworld)

(Simon Cowell – “Congratulations. We shall need the body for evidence.”)

I watched Noel’s House Party every week but I hated the Blobby single (poss due to the Will Carling association?). I remember going round to some friends of my parents’ between Xmas and NY and one of their kids proudly displaying me her shiny new Blobby single she’d got as a present. I pitied her, reader, I pitied her.

I myself got a cassingle of Moving On Up by M People.

Quite the most unpleasant sound to emerge from Noel Edmonds’ Crinkly Bottom, this was greatly enjoyed by our daughter, who, at two and a quarter, was squarely in the Blobby demographic. Worse, she got his video for Christmas, so we had to endure repeated playings of that between Rosie & Jim and Tots TV (Spider in the Bath was good, though, and that had kids singing on it as well). Mr B was interviewed in Q, by the way, in the late Tom Hibbert’s “Who the Hell …” feature. Thankfully the man in the suit, whose name I don’t now recall, soon broke off from going “Blobby blobby blobby!” – possibly under threat of violence – and gave quite a sensible interview in which he basically said he just liked making kids happy. 2 seems charitable but I take the point that it was supposed to be rubbish anyway.

If anyone tries to tell you that TV used to be so much better in the old days, especially if they are only old enough to formulate proper memories from about 1990 onwards, Noel’s House Party should be thrown right at them. Watched by millions because it was that, Blind Date, a documentary on Roman Roads on BBC2, a random French film on C4 or turning the TV off (and why would anyone do that?), it stands out as being cheap, occasionally nasty and utterly lightweight. Were we really better off with families watching this on Saturday night instead of Strictly, X Factor or what have you? Never mind that the Beeb were in the middle of their self imposed Dr Who exile. There really could have been something a hell of a lot more entertaining on than NHP – but why bother eh? The proles don’t have any choice so they’ll lap it up. It’s not like I think we’re in a golden age of Saturday night TV now (though I suppose in some senses we might well be) but at least it’s better put together than Noel’s House Party.

Tosh anyway. Utter tosh. Lucky to get 1 – though marginally better than Bombalurina and Hale and Pace, so that much I agree with.

Tom and Marcello have nailed it. I wondered, as the dreary Major years rolled on, whether the Great British Public’s appetite for schadenfreude (Noel & Blobby for BBC, Beadle and his elaborate disguises for ITV) could ever be satiated. I found that Saturday Night’s TV watching started to become a chore rather than a delight.

I was settling into a family routine with my future ex-wife and her 6 year-old daughter who thought Mr Blobby was for “toddlers”. Her obsessions were unsurprisingly, Barbie and Ken. The Blobby single never passed our threshhold, for which I am eternally grateful.

The first eponymous number one single and – if I remember my Kutner & Leigh correctly – the tallest ever occupant of the top spot. It’s certainly a single seemingly tooled to be ultimately perverse, though Tom’s analysis seems a bit wishful thinking to me – the song has a certain bounce to it, never stays the same for too long and was, after all, a Christmas hit, so surely it’s more a case of the kiddies liking it than it is some lowbrow gag on the part of its buyers?

I have to say the Blobby phenomenon rather passed me by. At this stage I was more likely to spend my Saturday nights mashed up on ecstasy pipes than watching TV.

A man in pink and yellow dotted suit that falls over a lot whilst crying ‘blobby blobby blobby’…don’t know about you, but I always thought it sounded rather fun. I could never work out why people got so annoyed by him/ it.

#7 I think that’s quite unfair on Noel’s House Party really – 20 years ago time it seemed like perfectly pitched early evening family-orientated light entertainment and relatively imaginative and innovative with it e.g. ‘NTV’, ‘Wait Til I Get You Home’, introducing guests (regular or not) literally through the front door(bell). Blind Date good fun too. That said ’93 or not long after is probably around the time both were starting to seem tired.

I’ll join the semi-defenders. I remember at the time feeling rather pleased that this cheap throwaway gag became such a phenomenon, conquering the carefully researched and market-tested products of the international toy and entertainment brands – proving once more that nobody knows anything.

If the BBC had actually intended this to happen, the character would surely have been slicker and better-written, with more than one joke to offer. Auntie would surely also have made more than one costume – I remember that nasty rubbery thing becoming more grubby, creased and decrepit with each week’s antics. I can only imagine what it must have smelt like.

And the commercial windfall must surely have helped the BBC keep the licence fee a fair bit during the hard times of the early 90s; the fad may even have helped save the BBC, which was at the time under threat from the Government like never before. So perhaps this is actually one of the most politically important number ones of the nineties. Would we really prefer that it had never existed?

At the time in the US NPR (National Public Radio) did a ‘The UK charts are crazy/The UK has lost its mind on bleep and E’ story that used this track as its terminus. IIRC, the commentator played a couple of (alien to the US) things including 2 Unlimited’s big hit then presented Mr Blobby as the bottom of an inanity slippery slope.

Anyhow, hearing it now in the context of Popular, Mr Blobby feels entirely continuous with prior (The Stonk, We love you Grandma, Do The Bartman) and subsequent (Krazy Bunny) novelty songs rather than any sort of identifiable cultural moment or trend:
1

Unwanted consistency check: TomScore(Mr Blobby) = TomScore(Imagine) = TomScore(Mull of Kintyre) = TomScore(I’d like to teach the world to sing).

I watched and enjoyed Noel’s House Party every week, but the introduction of Mr Blobby just baffled me. He knocks over something, annoys someone, yes, but it just isn’t funny, not in the slightest.
Then he’s suddenly at number one with a song which also isn’t funny, not in the slightest.
Yes, it could be worse, it could have more bad jokes and more novely sound effects, but then at least it would have something.

Also, fantastic quote from that Daily Fail article – ”
“The ravers should have more respect for Mr Blobby. He was a hero to a lot of kids and the thought of them taking drugs and having all-night raves in his house is completely disrespectful.”

The most interesting thing about Mr Blobby is that he started as a parody of a children’s character and then became an actual children’s character.

Of course, there was a follow-up – with Noel on lead vocals!

Despite NHP, Blind Date and Beadle’s About, 1993 TV was changing.
The Word and The Big Breakfast had Channel 4 surfing some kind of televisual zeitgeist. Brookside was probably the best soap out there. Quentin Crisp’s contribution to the first Alternative Christmas Message. It seemed to me all the exciting stuff was happening on the fourth channel.
BBC1 ended Going Live and replaced it with Live And Kicking, which was almost identical. BBC2 launched the marvellous Shooting Stars.
ITV was busy with it’s new independent franchises, but they slapped us about with Cracker, and tickled us with Dale’s Supermarket Sweep.

AND HERE IT IS!!!

Officially the worst ever No.1 for me in the history of the universe.

TOM! How can you give this absolute piece of tripe a 2? I would rather listen to the dreadful “grandma” song 10 times over than hear this again just once. “Mr. Blobby” is the worst example of something just thrown together for a quick buck while riding on the back of a temporarily popular – and then increadably annoying – childrens character. Admittedly this has been done since music began, but at least future No 1’s of a similar ilk sounded like some work had been put into them.

This record alone made Xmas 1993 my worst one ever – mainly because the mental scares it inflicted on me remain to this day – and are all I CAN remember of that particular Xmas.

Phew!! Glad i got that of my chest…..

Late 1993 for me was when the phrase “comedy is the new rock and roll” gained momentum. Radio 1 around this time featured people like Alan Davies, Chris Morris, Lee and Herring and recent recipient of an OBE Armando Ianucci in their 9pm comedy hour. The Day Today made it’s TV début the following January.

I will say this about Mr Blobby. Even if it took the duration of a pub lunch to write there is far more craft in this than some of the X-Factor finalists’ Christmas number 1’s.

Not having heard the song or really known who Mr Blobby was before yesterday, this was a first-time listen for me, and I’ll be damned if there’s ever a second. I can see how it might appeal to five-year-olds, but please, please, may it never appeal to mine. “The Stonk” and Bombalurina are harmless fluff by comparison.

Now that I’ve voted on it, seeing “You say: 1” feels like words are being put into my mouth, to the tune of 1.

mr blobby IS the higgs boson: they knew all along, they were just waiting for tom’s score

non obbligato sed blobbligato

This thread is shaping up to be a latterday “No Charge” isn’t it? It’s a record that divides opinion to some extent – not, however, as to whether it’s good or bad, merely how bad. I’ve resisted the urge to listen to it again, but there is a proper female singer on it, isn’t there? Has she ever been identified?

Follow-up “Jack Your Blobby” failed to chart. Or exist :-(((((((

I was interested to read the pro-Blobby comments (or as pro-Blobby as could be managed). Probably the liveliest of these was #17 to which I have to reply: if only! Sadly I don’t think such an argument holds any real water; although the writers may have tinkered with the record’s body in terms of mild subversion, I really do not think that there was any powering motive behind its existence other than the BBC trying to maximise income from a then highly profitable brand. It wasn’t the first time Noel had done it, either; remember “Brown Sauce” and their late 1981 Swap Shop tie-in single “I Wanna Be A Winner”? Has not been played at all on radio since it was a hit, probably because of the line “Go Nationwide with Frank Bough.”

About the listening trends of 12-year-olds; well, of course there is a degree of revisionism at work in some cases but it’s unfair to those who were actually listening to something other than Blobby-type froth at that age. For what I was listening to at that age, see TPL in due course (I’m saying no more).

Finally, careful with that “us” (#42) – I don’t like “Every Loser Wins” that much, but then nor do I hate it.

Erm, @43, that is. I shouldn’t have edited my original “people” to “us”, I suppose; an attempt not to be even-handed to a fault. “Hating” is an unhelpful word there, too. I meant it in the same loose way that many use “loving” (for “liking a great deal”), not as an expression of hatred equivalent in degree to the love people feel for their partners or children. I don’t hate Nick Berry himself (I barely know much about him), but I certainly dislike that song a great deal. Judging by its average score, so do many other Popular readers.

Paul Haig’s tinned peaches to thread.

#48: A “bunnied” record featuring a recently departed comedy giant, I think.