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It became ITV's answer to Crackerjack, long after the BBC axed it, and he was the second Rod to be seen on Children's ITV after Rod Burton (as in Rod, Jane and Freddy) on the Friday afternoon repeat of Rainbow. It also became the 1970s answer to Border TV's Krankies' Television series. The question was at the time, was Rod Hull just an act with one person or was he the straightman in a double act? We do live in the real world and not Fantasyland, sorry to disappoint you...
Born in 1935 in Kent (and not Hull in a similar way as to how Eric Morecambe got his stage name), Rodney Stephen Hull left for Australia for fortune and fame; he had the time of his life as an actor performing on comedy shows for the Channel Nine network, and he had even got, what Bruce Forsyth would have called, an Irish oven glove for his troubles. Hull was its puppeteer, but he was no Mike Yarwood; and so the glove declined to comment, or perhaps he was just another Harry Corbett and not another Ray Alan.
By 1971 the Pommie-born Hull returned to his native Great Britain with an emu, imaginatively called Emu. It was a double act that literally fit him like a glove, and he was to have fun with it for at least the next 20 years or so. The 1972 Royal Variety Performance in presence of the Queen Mother; emus don't usually eat flowers and so nothing disasterous would have happened here? Wrong! Had her eldest daughter had overseen Hull's act like she had done in odd-numbered years back then, who would have known what had happened next? How far away is the tower?
Emu's Broadcasting Company (and not the English Broadcasting Corporation aka EBC 1) ran for several series from the mid to late 1970s and was revived in a similar way as EMU-TV, made for Central by Canadian broadcasters with British segments thrown in. Who else would visit a 1970s frozen food store, grab oneself by the back of the arm and throw oneself into a deep chest freezer, and as it was 1975 when this was filmed, the chest freezer of its day was probably full of 25p Birds' Eye Arctic Rolls, Supermousses and Vesta curries? Perhaps he was wearing that "glove" at the time to prevent his hand from getting frostbite? Oh, and there was that episode where a lunchtime supervisor (dinner ladies to the masses) "fed" Emu some cabbage. It was cleaned out later on.
The Parkinson interview in November 1976 was the jewel in the crown when it comes to British television history, and don't forget that this was a week or so prior to the Sex Pistols' profanity on Bill Grundy's Today programme that despite only Londoners seeing on their ITV screens, it reached the front page of the Daily Mirror at the time, wishing that most Thames TV viewers could watch About Anglia instead. Michael Parkinson still had a very (no doubt, fashionable at the time) brown-looking studio with some beige leatherette swivel chairs and a coffee table in the middle with detachable round glass top. Hull (because Emu isn't real, you see), tears up the scripts, nearly breaks the glass table top into a million pieces, and then assaults the host. "He's alright, once you get to know him", Hull concluded. Billy Connolly's choice words would have been agreed by the majority of the public - both beak and arm would have been slightly re-arranged as promised.
Some Seaside Specials and a Bank Holiday Disney Time followed, but it was around this time that I would have thought of Hull as a bargain basement act on the same level as the Krankies, Keith Harris and Orville and Stu Francis. He even did a pantomime for LWT in 1977 and got to work with the blunt northerner George A Cooper. Hull and Emu appeared in TV commercials for Rowntree's Fruit Pastilles and the Scottish tourist board - well YouTube claims that such commercials were made. And then the 1970s ended and the 1980s began: in 1982 Emu attempted to snatch a familiar red photograph album from a nearly 60 year old Irish TV Presenter, but the name in gold lettering on it proclaimed his owner. This was his (and not Emu's) life, and we were treated to a history of the performer at 7.00 pm on a Wednesday evening.
ATV became Central Independent Television under the orders of the Independent Broadcasting Authority which meant that the East Midlands had more localised news; the West Midlands had more Bob Warman and somewhere in between, the reform of regional ITV meant that we had reached the 1980s at last. Emu's World was the main series that Central had made for Hull, alternating under different titles for the following six years including the Pink Windmill Show. Hull, dressed in a pink jacket and trousers (or even leggings?) as if he was trying to obey TV-am management (and yes, he did appear on Good Morning Britain to plug a book on poetry and attack John Stapleton on the famous sofa), was to be in charge in the infamous Pink Windmill surrounded by young people (aka brats).
So, Emu's World, then: a show usually on Friday afternoons; the only Children's ITV show to have an ad break in the middle of it due to being over half an hour in length. The "pinkness" of the inside of the windmill on the show probably gave an illusion that it was supposed to be a "girls'" programme, and ironically, the main female star Grotbags, aka Carol Lee Scott (just think of Vera Duckworth via green make-up) was on the "boys'" side, what with the blue painted grotto from the inside. Scott and Hull worked together in a summer season at the theatre which partly led to them working on the new Central series launched after the new company first came on air. Did Emu's World actually feel like a girls' programme because of the Pink Windmill, I wonder?
"There's somebody at the door" became a national catchphrase, mostly because our vulnerable neighbours were probably scared of answering the front door just in case it was those people from the bailiffs, Jehovah's Witnesses or TV Licensing. But at least, no green witch would be standing outside unless it was Hallowe'en, that is. The Pink Windmill Kids were the Brian Rogers Connection of the show, providing musical and dancing interludes, often wearing 1980s keep-fit legwarmers and being seen in familiar locations such as parts of Nottingham, and ripping off Olivia Newton-John hits. Now, was I the only person who was jealous of seeing youngsters who were the same age as myself performing on TV? Was there most girls than boys in that dance group? - it seemed like to me. I am sure that first thing Monday morning when they came back to school, they were treated, shall we say, just a little bit differently due to the rest of their peer group?
Anyone remember the pink "Krypton Factor assault course-alike" game that they did, as well as how much a tin of Emu's Soup was? And Emile Heskey being called Emily? What about the Cauldrons in Grotbags' Grotto which seem to be placed out of reach, a la the "flipped bookcase" Terry's Chocolate Orange advert? And then when ITV pulled the plug in 1988, Hull told his colleagues, "as of now, we are finished", and went on, "I'm not your meal ticket any longer". He managed to do a series of EMU-TV where for once they even coaxed Bill Oddie and Bernie Winters - Schnorbitz included - as ironic guests, and in 1991 Hull wrote and created an animated series of Rod 'n' Emu; the bird could now literally stand and walk on its own two feet.
By 1993 Hull had swapped the papier-mache bird for a pipe in his right hand, and in the same year he had became Pipe Smoker of the Year; an award that had predecessors such as Harold Wilson and Eric Morecambe. It was also around this time that any TV appearances seemed to be limited to ironic guest appearances on other people's shows. He was a victim of the 1992 recession just like a lot of Thatcher-era entertainers were; he lived at Restoration House but could no long afford to live there when the money stopped coming in due to a lack of work. Cue a now elderly-looking Hull appearing on Esther Rantzen's talk show around 1996, explaining his downfall and having to live in a shepherds' cottage on the Kent/Sussex border.
And then, one Wednesday night in February 1999, there was some football on ITV, and Rod Hull decided to watch it. One assumes that Sky or cable was not available in his neck of the woods (and with just £2,000 in the bank) could he had afforded to have the service anyway? He had a ghosty picture on screen, and so got the ladder out yet again and climbed onto the roof, apart from the fact that it was the last thing that he ever did. The entertainment pages reported his demise the following day, and a hero from so many people's childhoods had now gone prematurely at the age of 63.
I watched the Bird in the Hand documentary in 2003 and it did give us a greater insight into Hull's life than his This is Your Life would have done 21 years earlier. The women in his life; his retirement in his cottage with his family, and his drinking mates in his local. And no one famous attended his funeral either. He wanted to be a writer, but how can you write with a glove puppet stuffed up your right arm?
All because he was famous as a result of that flippin' bird.
Born in 1935 in Kent (and not Hull in a similar way as to how Eric Morecambe got his stage name), Rodney Stephen Hull left for Australia for fortune and fame; he had the time of his life as an actor performing on comedy shows for the Channel Nine network, and he had even got, what Bruce Forsyth would have called, an Irish oven glove for his troubles. Hull was its puppeteer, but he was no Mike Yarwood; and so the glove declined to comment, or perhaps he was just another Harry Corbett and not another Ray Alan.
By 1971 the Pommie-born Hull returned to his native Great Britain with an emu, imaginatively called Emu. It was a double act that literally fit him like a glove, and he was to have fun with it for at least the next 20 years or so. The 1972 Royal Variety Performance in presence of the Queen Mother; emus don't usually eat flowers and so nothing disasterous would have happened here? Wrong! Had her eldest daughter had overseen Hull's act like she had done in odd-numbered years back then, who would have known what had happened next? How far away is the tower?
Emu's Broadcasting Company (and not the English Broadcasting Corporation aka EBC 1) ran for several series from the mid to late 1970s and was revived in a similar way as EMU-TV, made for Central by Canadian broadcasters with British segments thrown in. Who else would visit a 1970s frozen food store, grab oneself by the back of the arm and throw oneself into a deep chest freezer, and as it was 1975 when this was filmed, the chest freezer of its day was probably full of 25p Birds' Eye Arctic Rolls, Supermousses and Vesta curries? Perhaps he was wearing that "glove" at the time to prevent his hand from getting frostbite? Oh, and there was that episode where a lunchtime supervisor (dinner ladies to the masses) "fed" Emu some cabbage. It was cleaned out later on.
The Parkinson interview in November 1976 was the jewel in the crown when it comes to British television history, and don't forget that this was a week or so prior to the Sex Pistols' profanity on Bill Grundy's Today programme that despite only Londoners seeing on their ITV screens, it reached the front page of the Daily Mirror at the time, wishing that most Thames TV viewers could watch About Anglia instead. Michael Parkinson still had a very (no doubt, fashionable at the time) brown-looking studio with some beige leatherette swivel chairs and a coffee table in the middle with detachable round glass top. Hull (because Emu isn't real, you see), tears up the scripts, nearly breaks the glass table top into a million pieces, and then assaults the host. "He's alright, once you get to know him", Hull concluded. Billy Connolly's choice words would have been agreed by the majority of the public - both beak and arm would have been slightly re-arranged as promised.
Some Seaside Specials and a Bank Holiday Disney Time followed, but it was around this time that I would have thought of Hull as a bargain basement act on the same level as the Krankies, Keith Harris and Orville and Stu Francis. He even did a pantomime for LWT in 1977 and got to work with the blunt northerner George A Cooper. Hull and Emu appeared in TV commercials for Rowntree's Fruit Pastilles and the Scottish tourist board - well YouTube claims that such commercials were made. And then the 1970s ended and the 1980s began: in 1982 Emu attempted to snatch a familiar red photograph album from a nearly 60 year old Irish TV Presenter, but the name in gold lettering on it proclaimed his owner. This was his (and not Emu's) life, and we were treated to a history of the performer at 7.00 pm on a Wednesday evening.
ATV became Central Independent Television under the orders of the Independent Broadcasting Authority which meant that the East Midlands had more localised news; the West Midlands had more Bob Warman and somewhere in between, the reform of regional ITV meant that we had reached the 1980s at last. Emu's World was the main series that Central had made for Hull, alternating under different titles for the following six years including the Pink Windmill Show. Hull, dressed in a pink jacket and trousers (or even leggings?) as if he was trying to obey TV-am management (and yes, he did appear on Good Morning Britain to plug a book on poetry and attack John Stapleton on the famous sofa), was to be in charge in the infamous Pink Windmill surrounded by young people (aka brats).
So, Emu's World, then: a show usually on Friday afternoons; the only Children's ITV show to have an ad break in the middle of it due to being over half an hour in length. The "pinkness" of the inside of the windmill on the show probably gave an illusion that it was supposed to be a "girls'" programme, and ironically, the main female star Grotbags, aka Carol Lee Scott (just think of Vera Duckworth via green make-up) was on the "boys'" side, what with the blue painted grotto from the inside. Scott and Hull worked together in a summer season at the theatre which partly led to them working on the new Central series launched after the new company first came on air. Did Emu's World actually feel like a girls' programme because of the Pink Windmill, I wonder?
"There's somebody at the door" became a national catchphrase, mostly because our vulnerable neighbours were probably scared of answering the front door just in case it was those people from the bailiffs, Jehovah's Witnesses or TV Licensing. But at least, no green witch would be standing outside unless it was Hallowe'en, that is. The Pink Windmill Kids were the Brian Rogers Connection of the show, providing musical and dancing interludes, often wearing 1980s keep-fit legwarmers and being seen in familiar locations such as parts of Nottingham, and ripping off Olivia Newton-John hits. Now, was I the only person who was jealous of seeing youngsters who were the same age as myself performing on TV? Was there most girls than boys in that dance group? - it seemed like to me. I am sure that first thing Monday morning when they came back to school, they were treated, shall we say, just a little bit differently due to the rest of their peer group?
Anyone remember the pink "Krypton Factor assault course-alike" game that they did, as well as how much a tin of Emu's Soup was? And Emile Heskey being called Emily? What about the Cauldrons in Grotbags' Grotto which seem to be placed out of reach, a la the "flipped bookcase" Terry's Chocolate Orange advert? And then when ITV pulled the plug in 1988, Hull told his colleagues, "as of now, we are finished", and went on, "I'm not your meal ticket any longer". He managed to do a series of EMU-TV where for once they even coaxed Bill Oddie and Bernie Winters - Schnorbitz included - as ironic guests, and in 1991 Hull wrote and created an animated series of Rod 'n' Emu; the bird could now literally stand and walk on its own two feet.
By 1993 Hull had swapped the papier-mache bird for a pipe in his right hand, and in the same year he had became Pipe Smoker of the Year; an award that had predecessors such as Harold Wilson and Eric Morecambe. It was also around this time that any TV appearances seemed to be limited to ironic guest appearances on other people's shows. He was a victim of the 1992 recession just like a lot of Thatcher-era entertainers were; he lived at Restoration House but could no long afford to live there when the money stopped coming in due to a lack of work. Cue a now elderly-looking Hull appearing on Esther Rantzen's talk show around 1996, explaining his downfall and having to live in a shepherds' cottage on the Kent/Sussex border.
And then, one Wednesday night in February 1999, there was some football on ITV, and Rod Hull decided to watch it. One assumes that Sky or cable was not available in his neck of the woods (and with just £2,000 in the bank) could he had afforded to have the service anyway? He had a ghosty picture on screen, and so got the ladder out yet again and climbed onto the roof, apart from the fact that it was the last thing that he ever did. The entertainment pages reported his demise the following day, and a hero from so many people's childhoods had now gone prematurely at the age of 63.
I watched the Bird in the Hand documentary in 2003 and it did give us a greater insight into Hull's life than his This is Your Life would have done 21 years earlier. The women in his life; his retirement in his cottage with his family, and his drinking mates in his local. And no one famous attended his funeral either. He wanted to be a writer, but how can you write with a glove puppet stuffed up your right arm?
All because he was famous as a result of that flippin' bird.
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