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Rod, Jane and Freddy

TOUSLED RAINBOW trio tootlers spin off with a quickly-forgotten “musical play” set around some misjudged theme – eg “Wobblyworld” where everyone was made of jelly. The kids wouldn’t have it.

9 Comments

9 Comments

  1. THX 1139

    December 4, 2021 at 2:08 pm

    And yet Roger languished in El Dorado. Jane’s harmonies were always “interesting”.

  2. Glenn Aylett

    December 4, 2021 at 4:01 pm

    Whenever hear these names mentioned, it’s back to 1973 again and Jane’s maxi dress, one of the first things I remember from the television. Seemingly they kept this early seventies fashion look for a long time and I spotted Geoffrey on Rainbow in flares as late as 1983.

  3. Richardpd

    December 4, 2021 at 9:41 pm

    I remember a few children’s TV shows seemed to be behind the times fashion wise.

    Some of the 1980s Playschool inserts looked like they had been films years ealier, especially one where a boy was having his hair cut with the back left long which was well out of fashion by 1987!

  4. Glenn Aylett

    December 5, 2021 at 11:10 am

    @ Richardpd, in Rainbow it seemed to be the early seventies well into the eighties and Geoffrey never really moved with the times.
    Mind you, the Open University seemed stuck in 1973 as well, although many of the courses were recorded and re used for years. Typical OU presenter was a man in brown flares, a brown shirt with huge lapels and a corduroy jacket.

  5. Richardpd

    December 5, 2021 at 9:59 pm

    The classic beardy & blackboard image of the OU kept the likes of Jasper Carrott with suitable material for their routines for many years.

    Some schools programming seemed to be repeated for years, which must have beem amusing for pupils watching years later.

    I can remember Channel 4 showing some daytime documentaries well into the 1990s that looked older than the channel, being shot on the scratchy 16mm film stock the Sweeney was shot on.

  6. Glenn Aylett

    December 6, 2021 at 6:22 pm

    I suppose a schools programme about physics experiments doesn’t really need to be updated, as the experiments stay the same, but something made in 1973 with a presenter who looked like he was an ageing hippy would look comical to kids ten years later. Then, of course, you had the Fingerbobs repeats from 1972 with Mick Fleetwood lookalike Rick Jones RIP, where by the eighties he looked prehistoric.

    • Richardpd

      December 6, 2021 at 10:34 pm

      Yes even back in the day Fingerbobs seemed ancient in style by the 1980s.

      When CBBC started screening the Children’s Film Foundation back catalogue in the 1980s, the different style was noticeable, even with the later ones made in the 1980s!

      • Glenn Aylett

        December 7, 2021 at 7:48 pm

        Fingerbobs was a clever concept and probably one of the cheapest the BBC could find, a presenter using puppets made of paper on the end of his fingers, but it worked until about 1980, when dear old Yoffi and the hippyish tone of some of the music made it look very old.

  7. Tom Ronson

    March 31, 2022 at 3:12 am

    There’s an interesting video on YouTube of Rod, Jane and Freddy doing their three-person show at a theatre somewhere in the early nineties. It’s a grab-bag of musical numbers, comedy skits (Freddy arsing about as an incompetent photographer, Rod doing his pantomime dame act), audience participation, performance art (think the Black Light Theatre of Prague on a budget of flumpence), odd wish fulfilment (Jane does an entire number dressed as a cat, presumably her open audition for the Lloyd-Webber-penned West End behemoth) and ‘nice songs sung properly’ for the grown-ups. Worth watching, but every shot of the audience reveals a load of little kids scoffing crisps and chocolate and looking bored out of their minds.

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