1997 Teletubbies: Teletubbies Say Eh-Oh!

Being the seventies child that I am, I'm always quick to refer to 'my' era of children's television as being a 'golden' one, a vision of Arcadia before the Goths and the Vandals breached its walls, sacked its buildings and laid waste to its gardens (I'm looking at you Timmy Mallet). In other words, a benchmarking of quality to which all others should aspire and inevitably fall short; was 'Going Live' better than 'Tiswas'? I think not, but then I would say that wouldn't I?

Teletubbies were a late nineties BBC television show aimed at young children that featured four primary coloured, baby faced, non human characters with a TV built into their chest and an antenna on their heads (that's them on the cover). These are facts that I've gleaned via simply 'being around' when the show first aired; I can hold my hands up and say that I've never actually seen a single episode in my life. In fairness to me, it's hard (and not a little bit creepy) to keep up with children's week day television when you're an adult in full time employment with no kids of your own and so it's fair to assume that the people behind the show didn't have people like me in mind as their target audience.

So on those terms at least, I'm carrying too many years to credibly provide any meaningful comment on a song that derived from that very show. And yes, before you start, I'm quite aware that the people behind some of the singles I've merrily slagged off down the years could make exactly the same claim about their wares too, but as 'Teletubbies Say "Eh-Oh!"' is basically an extended version of the theme to a show aimed specifically at pre-school children then I think I'm justified in placing it outside any of the interconnecting circles of the popular music Venn Diagram.

Ah, but even though I was too old to appreciate the Teletubbies at their peak, I was most definitely at the right age in the seventies to appreciate The Wombles when they were at theirs. And it's through clear memory rather than the warm valves of nostalgic glow that I remember how much pleasure 'The Wombling Song' theme tune single gave me when I was given it as a birthday present in 1974. Can I now be so curmudgeonly as to in any way criticise a song that would probably have given the nineties version of me the same level of enjoyment and treasure trove of memories? I think not. So I'm not going to.*


* The nostalgia supremacist in me is dying to point out that Mike Batt's Wombles tune was a 'proper' song with an iconic clarinet riff worthy of Benny Goodman and a tune that could be both be enjoyed in its own right and have carried any set of lyrics whereas, in comparison, 'Teletubbies Say "Eh-Oh!"' is a thirty second indent stretched by repetition alone into single length until it makes my teeth buzz the way they do whenever I eat too much chocolate. Lucky I'm not so petty and culturally insecure to do that eh?