John Eccleston

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This article refers to John Eccleston, the British puppeteer, there is currently no article for the Canadian singer/songwriter of the same name.

John Eccleston is a puppeteer, known for his work as Rygel in Farscape, Groove in The Hoobs and his many roles on British children's television alongside Don Austen.^[1] He was also behind the ITV character Gilbert the Alien, who was voiced by Phil Cornwell,^[2] and was also one of 3 different puppeteers (alongside Richard Coombs & Michael J. Bassett), who voiced & operated the puppet, Scally The Dog, on Children's ITV from 1989 - 1991.

He also had a brief 'in vision' television career, as one of the original presenters of the UK version of the Disney Club, Run the Risk, The Big Dish and Brill, a children's magazine show. He worked alongside Don Austen on the Saturday morning kids show What's Up Doc? He and Don provided the voices and operated the puppet wolves Bro & Bro. Their writing skill on this show garnered a spin off ITV show called Wolf It! which also featured Stephen Taylor Woodrow, Peter Cox and Laurence Akers from What's Up Doc?. They then reinvented the wolves as leprechauns for Going Live on the BBC before returning as Scratch and Sniff (with John playing sniff) in Ministry of Mayhem (later renamed to Holly and Stephen's Saturday Showdown) and the Hyenas recorded 15 episodes of the gameshow Scratch 'n' Sniff's Den Of Doom for Granada Kids. Jon appeared in the award winning short film The Box,^[3] directed by Michael J. Bassett and also starring Paul Hendy, Richard Orford and Laurence Akers.