John Eccleston is a puppeteer, writer and presenter known for his work as lead puppeteer of 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] He also performed Worth the Dog in the Woolworths adverts (again opposite Don Austen as Wooly The Sheep), Mervin J Minky on MTV's FURtv and Rattus Rattus on the CBBC Horrible Histories series.
His 'in vision' television career started as one of the original presenters of the UK version of the Mickey Mouse Club, Disney Club, the success of which led to him presenting Run the Risk, The Big Dish, children's magazine show Brill, and Get The Picture for Nickelodeon. It took seven years for him to realise he didn't like being pointed at in the street and he has remained off screen ever since. He worked alongside Don Austen on the Saturday morning children's 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! What's Up Doc?. John was approached to provide new characters for the BBC flagship series LIVE & KICKING once again teaming up with Don Austen and Darryl Worbey to create THE LEPRECHAUNS - Mr Sage and Mr Onion. The characters appeared across six years - outliving three sets of presenters. John, Don and Darryl teamed up yet again to create Scratch and Sniff (with John playing Sniff) on Ministry of Mayhem (later reworked as 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. John 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. He also is the puppetor for Rattus on the CBBC program, Horrible Histories.