54 Pinky and Perky

First  watched  : Uncertain

Pinky  and  Perky  were  originally   contemporaries  of  Muffin  the  Mule  on  the  BBC  and  lasted from  1957  to  1968. These  two  clunky  wooden string  puppets   spoke  and  sang  in  high  pitched voices  because  the  recordings  had  been  sped  up , a  very  simple  gimmick  but  it  obviously worked  for  a  considerable  length  of  time.  With  record  players  in  every  home  the  BBC decided  it  had  had  its  day  in  1968  but  ITV  picked  up  the  ball   and  ran  with  the  porcine pals  until  1971.

In  the  BBC  version  they  had  a  human  foil  and  took  part  in  skeches. This  was  all  stripped  out  in  the  ITV show  which  merely  had  them  miming  and  dancing  to  speeded  up  records.

A  number  of  Pinky  and  Perky  records  were  released  , both  singles  and  albums  but  none  charted, the  people  being  smart  enough  to  realise  they  could  create  just  as  good  a  version  from  their  existing  record  collection  with  a  flick  of  the  switch  on  their  Dansette.

The  pigs  disappeared  from  the  screen  for  two  whole  decades  before  a  brief  revival  in  The  Pig  Attraction  ( which  did  spawn  a  very  minor  hit  with  their  version  of  Reet  Petite  in  1993 )  and  then  morphed  into   animated  characters  for  a  show  on  CBBC  in  2008  which  is  still  being  shown.