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Clip description
The tea party was ‘worth making a song and dance about’ but Rebecca (Hetherington), Blackboard and Mr Squiggle (both operated and voiced by Norman Hetherington) are waiting for Gus the Snail to arrive. In the meantime, it’s time for a squiggle or two.
Curator’s notes
In this sequence Mr Squiggle uses his pencil-nose to create recognisable drawings from children’s squiggles, often drawing them upside down. ‘Everything is upside down’, Mr Squiggle is often fond of saying. But when I previously spoke with the Everingtons at their home, Norman the puppeteer told me:
Well, of course that’s the right way up to me. In the earlier days, if we were doing three or four in the program I’d draw one the right way up, one sideways and one upside down. Then I took the easy way later – just did them all upside down. Occasionally, I’d forget what I’d planned to make out of the squiggle and have to make it up then and there. I had to get a variety – couldn’t draw six elephants, had to draw one elephant and one tiger and one something or other. They were mainly animals, I don’t know why but that’s the way it turned out.
Another key to the success of Mr Squiggle and Friends is the genuine interactivity represented by the use of children’s squiggles, which are credited on the program. In this clip, Rebecca tactfully teases Mr Squiggle with the suggestion that 'the subject matter could be more interesting’ for a young girl than a drawing of a set of golf clubs. He then ingeniously turns the golf clubs into a face with top hat. It’s hard to know for sure whether this part of the scene was improvised or unfolded as planned, but the transformation is inventive and amusing. The significance for children is that, with imagination, ordinary squiggles can be turned into interesting drawings.
