1993 Mr Blobby: Mr Blobby

Fronted by Noel Edmonds, the dark prince of lowbrow light entertainment, 'Noel's House Party' was an insanely popular Saturday evening show in the UK for much of the nineties. Set in a factious stately home where anarchic japery ruled supreme, it was presided over by a smug Edmonds who, although ostensibly game for a laugh, always looked like he couldn't believe so many people were buying into his puddle shallow crap but nevertheless was rather pleased that they were. A recurring character was 'Mr Blobby', a creation at once as basic and unlikeable as is humanly possible (somebody in a very cheap looking pink with yellow spots suit and the boggle eyed, fixed grin of a simpleton psychopath whose just seen his latest victim), Blobby was a slapstick cartoon figure who would appear at random just to fall over to roars of laughter from the studio audience in the sort of scenario that the highbrow yet equally smug Clive James used to drag out to poke fun at/be all superior about what weird TV Johnny Foreigner watched.

Blobby's sole means of communication was to say 'blobby blobby blobby' over and over, a trait that hardly makes for a likely candidate to front a pop single, which I guess goes some way to explain why 'Mr Blobby' was and remains such a gruelling experience. Over the course of its three and a half minutes it presents a target for hatred bigger than just the barn door, but for me it's the whole lack of effort that grates the most, the absence of any ambition other than to churn out a Christmas single as humourless and unlikeable as the character himself. "Blobby, oh Mr Blobby, when disaster strikes you never get depressed" sing a battery of kids over a tune that does the bare minimum to actually qualify as being a 'tune' while Blobby himself does whatever bits of blobby business he can in the background. Not good pop, not even good cheese, 'Mr Blobby' is as cold and cynical an example of an opportunistically money making single as you're ever likely to hear.