EH-OH, IT’S THE TELETUBBIES!

A long, long time ago, when Reuben was a mere solo act, I wept on a few shoulders via the Patteran Pages about his infatuation with The Teletubbies.  Sorry to re-open this ugly topic but, tragically, the condition prevails.  He’s four-years-old now & the senior member of a trio, a figure of influence who should be articulating standards for his sisters.

Not a bit of it: as he cuddles his near-lifesize effigy of La-La within his corner of the sofa, Rosie & Maisie are in place, equally rapt. In fact, even if Maisie’s down the other end of the corridor with her head & shoulders thrust deep into a foetid wastepaper basket, she’ll abandon it the moment he hears those scary voices & she’ll race her chariot towards the living room, cannoning off the walls in her eagerness.

Recently we’ve tried weaning them off with intensive exposure to something called The Fimbles, which is on several times a day on satellite.  This also consists of men & women sweating pounds off inside grotesque costumes babbling strangulated nonsense. 

But somehow as I watch cautiously from the safety of the doorway I don’t get from them that same Teletubby vibe, that sense that within those man-made fibres there perspires a heartbroken thesp who once had aspirations to the stage of The Globe – Macbeth, Lady Macbeth, Banquo, or even just the sodding Porter.  (Or, more unsettlingly still, a diminutive man or woman who has actually found his or her performance niche; an actor who has thoroughly researched the role, has discussed character motivation & super-objective with the director & has created an entire subtext & back-history for Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, La-La or Po).  Somehow from each animated Fimble there emanates the phlegmatic air of ‘Fuck it, I’ve got a mortgage to pay.  This week The Fimbles, next week the arse-end of a pantomime horse, the week after that dead on a trolley in Casualty. I should worry…’ 

And that makes a difference.  I can sense the studio lighting, glimpse the zips up the back & wince at the papier-mâché & chicken wire, cheap’n’cheerful awfulness of it all.   But with The Teletubbies that rolling greensward, that high-tech hobbit hole, those placid rabbits, that distant skyline are all just a bit too convincing.  A small team of people has gone to enormous lengths to create that microworld & its hellish occupants & that worries me.

I can only hope that, over time, intensive exposure to The Fimbles in their weird, multi-coloured knitted suits (with occasional very brief bursts of the toxic Wiggles) will gradually coax the three of them away from the lure of that dreadful land.