| Bosco | |
|---|---|
Bosco |
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| Created by | Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) |
| Starring | Bosco |
| Country of origin | Ireland |
| No. of episodes | 386[1] |
| Broadcast | |
| Original channel | RTÉ Two (formerly Network 2) |
| Original run | 30 September 1978 – 26 November 1998 |
Bosco was an Irish children's television programme produced during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It was produced by the Lambert Puppet Theatre. Designed by Jan Mitchell, Bosco was voiced by Miriam Lambert initially; in later years Paula Lambert took over the character. A shared cultural experience for children in Ireland at the time, it ran for 386 episodes, but was repeated before (and later during) The Den daily until 1998, when it was replaced by The Morbegs.
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Bosco (born 25 August) is the main character in the programme. He/she was a small red-haired puppet, supposedly a five year old boy/girl with bright red cheeks and speaks very high pitched. Bosco's gender was ambiguous. Bosco and the other presenters usually spoke English, but (to help young children learn Irish) Bosco often peppered English speech with Irish phrases, much as Dora the Explorer often speaks Spanish).
Bosco lived in a brightly painted wooden box (hence the name: Irish bosca="box"), only ever wandering far from it to go on excursions to such places as Dublin Zoo or the H.B. factory.
On 9 May 2011, on The Ray D'Arcy Show on Today FM, Bosco let slip that he is a boy, saying that they kept his gender a secret for 33 years.
The roster of presenters included Jonathan Ryan, Marian Richardson (now an RTÉ programme producer), Frank Twomey (later of Bull Island), Grainne Uí Mhaitiú, Philip Tyler (RIP), Susie Kennedy, Gertrude Kerrigan, Mary Garrioch and Peter Fitzgerald. Philip Tyler preceded Brian Dowling as the first openly gay children's TV presenter, though this was not widely known during the 1980s.[2]
There are various short animations, usually stop-motion, as part of the show. The Plonsters were plasticine critters, which are continually engaged in fights or schemes against each other. Faherty's Garden starred the eponymous Faherty a dog, plagued by an amateur crow magician (Cornelius, who would often turn purple, much to his distress) in a series of shorts featuring stop-motion models. Freddy the Fox features a host of well-modelled characters each with distinctive traits, such as Fiachra the Frog. There was also a cartoon featuring a potato family, The McSpuds, that live in a supermarket (Savers). At night, the potato children, Sheila and Seamus, run amok. The Tongue Twister Twins were also regularly featured. These animations were created by Jim Quin from Thurles, County Tipperary.
The show featured arts and crafts segments, in the style of the BBC's children's programme Blue Peter. Another prominent part of the show was story-time and each show featured a song.
Each episode had an on-location section of footage, this was introduced as "The Magic Door". The presenter would step through a chroma keyed door beyond which the footage would be shown. This section opened with the following rhyme:
| “ |
Knock knock, open wide, Knock knock, any more, |
” |
A disappointed looking Bosco is used on the RTÉ website when a page cannot be found. e.g. http://www.rte.ie/bosco