Zig and Zag are an Irish puppet duo performed by Mick O'Hara and Ciaran Morrison.
The characters are a pair of furry extraterrestrial twins from the planet Zog. They made their television début on RTÉs Dempsey's Den in 1987. A year later they won a Jacob's Award for TV Personalities of the year[2]. In 1992 Zig and Zag found fame in the UK when they joined the team of the Channel 4 breakfast show The Big Breakfast. During the 1990s the characters spawned a merchandising range of comic books, videos and embarked on a recording career – scoring a UK top five single with "Them Girls Them Girls".
In 2010 the characters saw a resurgence in their popularity as they joined the Big Brother's Little Brother[3] team and in October 2010 they were commissioned to host a flagship Saturday morning radio show on 2FM called Smells Like Saturday.[4] A brand new TV bloopers show hosted by Zig and Zag entitled Zig & Zag's Superbloopers[5] was announced on the RTE TV website in June 2011.
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Zig and Zag's full names are Zigmund Ambrose Zogly and Zagnatius Hillary Zogly[6] and claim they were born 29 February 1971 on Zog. Zig is beige (although he claimed to be fawn) with red "zogabongs" (pom-pom antennae) and a tuft of green hair, and Zag is purple with green spots and yellow zogabongs and dreadlocks. In their original RTÉ incarnation, Zig often came across as the more intelligent one, with Zag under his thumb (most evident in their "Story Time" segments, when Zig would read a nursery rhyme to the audience, and Zag would grudgingly act it out). Zag also displayed a penchant for cross-dressing and playing with Barbie dolls. However, after the two moved to Channel 4, Zag began to be portrayed as the more intelligent older brother, a lecherous lady-killer who claimed to fly every weekend to Hollywood to dine with the stars, as well as performing ragga songs in his guise of "Ragga Zagga". Zig was then portrayed as a weak-willed childish simpleton, constantly giggling at rude jokes (like the word "bottom"), obsessed with specific things (such as The Hunt for Red October or his rash) and frequently unaware of what was going on around him.
Ciaran Morrison and Mick O'Hara provide the voices for Zig and Zag respectively. Their production company, Double Z Enterprises produced The Den when Zig and Zag featured. In 2003 they produced a TV series for Channel 4 , The Bronx Bunny Show. They also regularly appear on RTÉ Two in their current incarnations of Podge and Rodge, fellow characters from The Den with an unsavoury past but who are now reformed enough for RTÉ to commission their own primetime chat show, The Podge and Rodge Show.
When Ian Dempsey left the then titled Dempsey's Den in 1990, Zig and Zag remained on with his replacement Ray D'Arcy. Their alien dog, Zuppy, also featured on television at this time. Zuppy remained with The Den for some years after Zig and Zag left. After having worked on The Den for a number of years, Zig and Zag worked concurrently on The Big Breakfast subsequently exiting The Den to work on the show exclusively. After their departure from RTÉ, Dustin the Turkey took over with new character Soky.
On The Big Breakfast, the two acted as interviewers in "the crunch" segment of the show. During this time, they also starred in a series of adverts for Yoplait yogurts. Zig and Zag made an appearance on MTV Europe on the show MTV's Most Wanted and this appearance led to their own MTV Europe sketch programme, The Zig and Zag Show. After a revamp of The Big Breakfast, they were dropped and produced a kids entertainment show also entitled The Zig and Zag Show for ITV. They then returned to Ireland to present the music quiz, 2Phat with Ray D'Arcy until 2001. They starred in a children's programme called Me:Tv for Nickelodeon UK and Ireland in the summer of 2006, the premise of which was kids used their own webcams to present the show. In 2010 they joined Big Brother's Little Brother team to interview past contestants.
Zig and Zag's first single "The Christmas No.1" reached No.1 in Ireland at Christmas 1990. Their album Never Mind the Zogabongs...Here's Zig and Zag and second single "Zig Zaggin Around" both also topped the Irish charts in 1991. On the back of their success on the Big Breakfast the pair were signed by Simon Cowell and released two singles on RCA. "Them Girls, Them Girls" produced by DJ Erick Morillo was released throughout Europe and its highest chart position in the U.K charts was at No.5 for the week ending 7 January 1995.
Singles
Albums
Zig and Zag produced a number of books in Ireland and the U.K. The first five books in the list were produced exclusively in Ireland as paperback fully illustrated comic books. In the U.K a further two comic book style paperbacks were produced, a hardback annual, a tie-in book with the series Dirty Deeds with photographs and text related to the series and a 416 page joke book.
Jacobs Television Awards:
National Entertainment Awards:
Royal Television Society Award:
Promax Awards:
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