Yet Another Unearthing

This time it's an episode of the YTV children's series "The Riddlers" which was one of the many programmes transmitted in the 12:10pm slot after "This Morning".

This particular episode features Mossop and Tiddler having to deal with a collapsing greenhouse where Middler ends up being trapped in. The only human character in this episode is Majorie Dawe as played by Victoria Williams who later appeared as the mother in the CBBC sitcom "Julia Jeckyl And Harriet Hyde" in the mid 90s.

And although he doesn't appear in this episode it's also worth mentioning next door neighbour Montgomery Grimley as played brilliantly by Peter Llewellyn-Jones who appeared in quite of lot of Yorkshire Television's programmes for younger viewers.
It appears that he's now a director of sign language interpretation at Leeds University.

In 1993 in line with all the other children's programmes broadcast in that timeslot,
the Riddlers moved to a 3:30pm timeslot within CITV itself and the episodes were cut down to 10 minutes. However the series became even better as it turned into more of a serial with one of them based around Mossop trying to find his elder brother Glossop, and another involving Mossop using thought magic to turn himself into a Tiddler, which was a younger version of a Riddler.

This resulted in the character Tiddler's name being changed to "Tidlup" who ended up using thought magic to turn Mossop back into a Riddler after what seemed like 20 weeks of him struggling to grow back into one himself.

It's worth mentioning that Mossop's voice was done by Richard Robinson who also provided the voice of Victor Gristle in the superb CBBC series "Dizzy Heights" in the early 90s, the titles to the first series can be seen here. Definitely one of my favourite children's comedy series, this lead to the spin off "The House Of Gristle" in 1994 with characters such as "Geoff Doorstep" and the horror story "Dah Dah Daaaah!".

Returning to the Riddlers, it's also worth mentioning the music as composed by Neil Innes who apart from The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band also narrated and composed the theme to one of YTV's other series "The Raggy Dolls". The full length version can be found on his website.

Neil was also a stand in for Colin Sell at the piano on "I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue" a few years ago although I doubt he got as much stick as Colin usually does. I happened to see Colin for a second time when Barry Cryer performed his "First Farewell Tour" at the Marlowe Theatre in 2003 where he was actually really good and did a few jokes in between Barry's routines.

The funniest part was when Barry performed a rendition of the theme to Birds Of A Feather "What Will I Do" (and a lot better than Pauline and Linda too) by asking the orchestra to make the noise of a triangle by saying the word "ting" in between each line resulting in this;

Barry: "What will I do"

Audience: Ting!

Barry: "When you"

Audience: "Ting!"

Barry: "Are far"

Audience: "Ting!"

And cue raucous laughter.


I saw Barry for a third time two years later, this time at the Gulbenkian in Canterbury with partner and guitarist Ronnie Golden who were just as funny with some amusing songs including one about John Prescott based around the Jimmy Dean country hit
"Big John".

Although I remember the song more for being featured in the Domestos ads in the late 80s as "Big Bad Dom".

Barry also gave a perfomance of his Norwegian number 1 hit "The Purple People Eater" which was used in the Next Lines round when he appeared as a guest on Never Mind The Buzzcocks in 2003.

Definitely one of the underrated comedy performers and writers who has a very impressive resume.