WHAT’S UP DOC?
One of
ITV’s Saturday morning children’s shows, including celebrity guests, features
(such as the history of lava lamps, or a guide to acne treatments), pop performances,
sketches, and Warner Bros. cartoons (hence the name).
What’s Up
Doc? was
presented by Andy Crane, Pat Sharp and Yvette Fielding. It was on in winter,
1992-1994, from
Updates
15/03/09 – Following the closure of previous
host AOL Hometown last October, I am in the process of re-housing my website.
As well as uploading this page again, I have also updated the Clips section below: look how many clips of What’s
Up Doc? are now on YouTube!
26/10/06 – Laurence
Akers, who worked on the programme, has been kind enough to email me:
‘I’ve just
been looking at your What’s Up Doc? Site. Brought the memories flooding
back. I was Music Associate on the show for half of series one and most of
series two until Vanessa [Hill – see below] and Ged left. I have to say it was
the most enjoyable experience of my life. Every week I’d have to approach the
bands or music guests and ask if they’d mind having the characters dance with
them at the end of the show. Most of them said yes and ironically it was the
one’s who said no that looked stupid.’
Thank you to Laurence
for this, and also for drawing my attention to the fact that many What’s Up
Doc? clips are now available to watch on YouTube. There are links below.
19/08/03 - After emailing
Andy Crane some time ago, I’m delighted to have received an email from Vanessa Hill (kindly referred to the site by Andy
Crane), who also worked on the programme:
‘Andy Crane just forwarded me the details
of your website entry/site on What’s Up Doc?. My partner and I were
responsible for most of the stuff you mention with the contributions of John
and Don who did the wolves, Stephen and Peter who did most of the characters,
the presenters who were game and lots of others who pitched in (Peter’s brother
used to come down on Saturdays and do Billy Box and a lot of the production
team featured as well).I produced series 1 and half of series 2 before leaving
the show. I’d forgotten half of the stuff we did but it all came flooding back
and made me laugh!’
Thank you for
emailing, Vanessa, and thanks for your contributions to this page!
Cast
Photo Available. To see a marvellous photo of all the
presenters and characters from the show – a scan of the postcard sent out to
everyone who writes to What’s Up Doc? – click here. To see the
heartening message printed on the back of the postcard, click here.
What’s
Up Doc? back on
TV! On Friday 3rd
January 2003, a CITV showed a Birthday Bash, looking back on 20 years of
Children’s ITV. This included several clips from What’s Up Doc? Read on
for more details.
Earlier, on Saturday
28th October 2002 (and the repeat on 28th December 2002),
the first clip to be shown on Denis Norden’s out-take show More Kids From
Alright On The Night was of What’s Up Doc? The presenters got Lulu
to give a shout out to a girl from Coventry who was ill, then realised that the
card had been misread and she was not ill but 11!
Opening
sequence
The opening was in the
style of a Warner Bros. cartoon, seen through the eyes of Bugs Bunny. He wakes
up late, just before 9:25, and has to rush to the TV studio. He passes many
other Warner characters on the way. He reaches the studio, rushes up to pose in
front of the What’s Up Doc? logo (see picture above), then collapses,
exhausted.
What I
liked most about What’s Up Doc? was the huge array of bizarre puppets/
costumed characters who popped throughout each show. There were almost too many
for the programme to handle. Some interacted with the presenters and guests and
each other, some didn’t. I found them all very funny. They inspired me so much
that I sent in a letter with little presents stuck on for each character; and
Andy Crane read the letter out! (I’ve since been struggling to find new
lifelong dreams.) Here’s what I can remember about them:
The
Wolves (Bro & Bro)
The most frequently
appearing characters were these two wolf brothers. They spent most sketches
enticing children or guests then eating them, dragging them below the screen in
a flurry of growling and clothes. At some point their voices changed. After a
while, they got their own spin-off show on CITV. Apparently, their double act
was recreated as the leprechauns on BBC’s Live And Kicking.
Gaston
LeGaston
A rotund, human-sized
French frog (why a frog? I just can’t think), complete with beret and striped shirt.
He used a wheelchair. He was a chef, and occasionally presented a cooking
segment. Aware that the French for bread is pain, Gaston once jabbed
Andy Crane with a baguette to give him ‘pain’.
Baljit
A sort of pet furball
with yellow eyes and a mouth, who often interacted with the presenters. At one
time, Baljit went to Azerbaijan on a charity trip and met some children. At
another time, Baljit had a baby.
Pasty
A large Cockney
earthworm. He later became the star of a soap...
The Undergrounders
An EastEnders
parody, right from the opening sequence, where Pasty crawls down a tunnel that
curves like the river Thames at the beginning of EastEnders. Undergrounders
featured a marketplace and a pub. Other characters included Mrs. Pasty, the
Pastys’ son Nick (who said “‘allo Ma, ‘allo Pa” like Nick Cotton), and Nan, who
had a heart attack at the end of each episode (“Oooh me ‘eart!”). In one
episode, Nan was prescribed royal jelly by Doctor Arm (a parody of EastEnder’s
Doctor Legg), but overdosed and turned into a bee.
NOTE: The above
characters all had their own clips during the CITV Birthday Bash, in a
section called ‘Presenters’ Assistants’.
Simon
Perry
By far the funniest
character, in my opinion. Played by Stephen Taylor Woodrow, he was an anorak
with a cheese obsession. Every so often, he would nominate Cheese Rangers, and
award them diploma scrolls, in a segment introduced by the following song (to
the tune of In The Navy):
‘It’s the Scrollies, so it must be Saturday,
I’ve got the Scrollies, and they will not go away!’
He once had a
supermodel girlfriend called Hilda, who was seemingly forgotten about in later
episodes. Simon Perry was shown leaving What’s Up Doc? shortly before
the series ended.
The Simon Perry
character was later seen on a series of Twix adverts under the name Norm (‘a
break from the Norm’).
Sam Sam
A man who wore a long
fur coat and had a Halloween pumpkin for a head. Here is a clip.
Cassie
A grey-haired
troll-woman. Here is a
clip.
Woolly
Vanessa
Hill remembers him as ‘a strange man
made of bits of old wool who couldn’t talk but sort of whistled at you.’
Billy
Box
A man made out of
boxes, with one for a head and another for the body. He lived in a house
backstage, with a box family.
Anthony
The Aspidistra
A large, green,
talking pot plant with a Home Counties accent. Vanessa
Hill reveals that he ‘overstepped the mark once by calling
Yvette a ‘council house cow-bag’....he didn’t last.’
Mr.
Spanky
This character, a
velvet-clad man with a mask, was introduced when he came over to a table laden
with Batman prizes and marvelled at the “jew-ells”. He used to run amok
squirting children with a kind of yellow foam (“ghee” – melted butter maybe)
from a small plastic tortoise, and blaming the tortoise, shouted “naughty
torty” or ‘the ghee, the ghee’ in a high-pitched voice. The character later
became a giant tortoise, who squirted people with a doll. Thank you very much
to Michelle Davies for most of these details.
Thanks very much to
Neil, who goes one stage further with this detailed description: ‘Dressed like
a Dandy - 3 cornered hat, white wig, long 3/4 length velvet riding coat, riding
breeches, white knee length socks and big buckled shoes. His face was covered
in what looked like a thin yellow sheet of latex, the mouth and eye holes
looked partly cut & partly torn. The mouth hole had red lipstick to give
the impression of ‘lips’ but it was a bit ‘smeary’ … If that wasn’t scary
enough - I seem to remember that on at least one week’s show, he had a
waistcoat made of ‘Roast Beef’ … only it looked more like a selection of
Italian Hams . I remember Andy Crane being shown the garment in question. Don’t
really remember him speaking much, but I do remember the screeching of ‘Naughty
Torty’ and flouncing/prancing about a bit, when he wasn’t squirting over people
or wrecking things on the planet thru the telescope. Thought he went downhill
when he actually ‘became’ the Tortoise.’
Life
With The Amoebas
A soap that ran for a
while on What’s Up Doc?. It began with a theme song:
‘Life with the amoebas, no-one can see us, because we’re small
(yes, we’re very very small)
Mum, Dad and the Baby, we’re the one-cell family… on your
television set.’
A narrator introduced
each episode. We see a photo of a living room. We can’t see the amoebas; they
are indicated by arrows, which jog up and down when they talk (in squeaky
Northern voices). In each episode, one of the amoebas wants to do something
(e.g. join the circus or blow out birthday candles), but one of the others
points out that it is impossible, because they are amoebas and have no arms/
legs/ mouths etc. Then all 3 amoebas go “wa, wa, waaa” in disappointment, before
the narrator tells us to tune in next week. Believe it or not, the idea
eventually ran out of steam.
NOTE: An episode of Life
With The Amoebas was shown during the CITV Birthday Bash, within a What’s
Up Doc? clip in a section on Saturday morning shows.
Interactive
Touch-Tone Games
A contest where
viewers were able to phone in, and use their phones touch-tones to play a
specially tailored video game scenario as it was displayed on TV. The first one
available was...
Hugo The (TV) Troll
Hugo had to perform
typical heroics, like locating treasure or rescuing his girlfriend (Hugolina)
or defeating a baddie. Hugo rode a cart along railway tracks, and had to switch
between tracks (left-hand, middle or right-hand) to avoid obstacles and reach
the end. This was later changed to involve Hugo flying a plane. As well as
affecting direction, the caller’s touch-tone buttons allowed for Pause, or Map
Display. Click on this link
for more information.
Joe Razz
This game, with
‘jazzy’ music, had more video (slick graphics) and less direct control over the
character. Joe Razz was a time-traveller stuck in the Jurassic (hence the name,
perhaps), on the run from a Tyrannosaurus Rex. At one point, he had to jump over
a log that appeared ahead. Later, the setting became Ancient Egypt: Joe Razz
had to avoid falling boulders and a statue-monster with laser-beam eyes. Here
is a link to more Joe Razz facts.
Guess
The Girth
This was a short-lived
feature about Yvette, introduced in the weeks preceding her maternity
leave. See picture of presenters
Loopy
Lottery
A competition which
ran for a few shows. Viewers could apply for a free Loopy Lottery ticket with
numbers on (sorry to state the obvious). There was a draw during each show.
Crack
The Safe
A short-lived phone-in
competition. In the studio was a locked safe containing a phone and prizes.
During the show three questions were posed with single digit answers (e.g. how
many dwarfs did Snow White know?). The answers formed the last three digits of
the phone line (the rest of the number was given); the first viewer to ring
that number unlocked the safe.
Pat
Sharp’s Charisma
Viewers sometimes
wrote in asking to be sent a sample of Pat Sharp’s Charisma. This was dispensed
in perfume bottles, which, when opened, triggered the sound of Pat saying
“Seeensational!” in the studio.
Greg
& Max
Two cooks, Greg
Robinson and Max Schofield, who were frequently guests on the show, and who
entered into the studio spirit. Occasionally impersonated by Bro & Bro. Here is a clip.
Telescope
A large coin-operated
telescope; when someone used it, we got to see a view of an alien landscape,
accompanied by ghostly music. The aliens on the planet were puppets dangled in
front of the camera, and sometimes included the show’s characters interfering.
Spam and
blooms
Thanks to Warren for
remembering that whenever someone mentioned or offered ‘spam and blooms’, the
studio went wild. And here
is a clip of it.
In case you were
wondering, when my letter was read out, I got sent a What’s Up Doc? pin
badge, and a What’s Up Doc? ballpoint pen.
Clips
Thanks to users of the
website YouTube, there are now several What’s Up Doc? clips online. Many
are pop star performances, but there are plenty of videos of the series’
wonderful and weird characters. Here are the links:
First of all, thank
you so much to theukarchivist for uploading 16
brilliant clips, featuring sketches with the Wolves, Greg & Max,
Cassie, Sam Sam, Simon Perry, Gaston…
Simon Perry, Andy and Pasty
as Cheese Rangers
Opening sequence & Cal
McCrystal’s What’s Up Doc? segments, posted by the man himself
Matt Hoffman bike stunts with
Pat (in drag)
Magician
Darryl Rose (list of clips)
End of episode with Andy as
Simon Perry; Kylie Minogue’s Better The Devil You Know
Technical breakdown during
Batman, 1992
Hank Marvin feature with Andy
and Simon Perry
Last episode of 1992 with
Boney M's Megamix
10 minutes of LWT music before
What's Up Doc? begins
CITV continuity 1993, with What’s
Up Doc? trailer
Dannii Minogue:
End of episode with This Is It
This Is The Way; Dannii chats
with Pat & Baljit; Simon & Dannii at black tie event
Take That:
End of episode with I Found
Heaven
Take That jackets competition
(poor quality). Gary Barlow praises What’s Up Doc – for a specific
reason, according to the programme’s Wikipedia
entry.
Bananarama:
I Want You Back, Hallowe’en
1992
The above two performances in
one video
The Farm:
Pasty & Andy; Don’t You
Want Me, 1992
End of episode with Rising
Sun, 1992
Gary Glitter, Another Rock And
Roll Christmas
Thanks to
Satkids.co.uk for some of the information on this page. Many thanks to the
superb knightmare.com for allowing the
use of various images.
I’m always grateful to
hear from people with memories of What’s Up Doc? and how excellent it
was, so if that’s you, please feel free to email me (removing ‘nospam.’ from the address
before you send). Thank you to all those who have done so.
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