Timmy Mallett

Timothy Luke "Timmy" Mallett (born 18 October 1955) is an English TV presenter, broadcaster and artist. He is known for his striking visual style, colourful glasses, loud shirts and the giant pink foam mallet, labelled 'Mallett's Mallet', as well as his 'utterly brilliant!' and 'blaaah!' catchphrases.

Career

Early radio career

Mallett was born in Marple, Cheshire. His media career started while he was a student at the University of Warwick where he worked on the student radio station, Radio Warwick. After graduating with a degree in History he started working at BBC Radio Oxford. He later moved to Centre Radio (now Leicester Sound) as the station's launch presenter. He also presented on Radio Luxembourg and Manchester's Piccadilly Radio. The programme he hosted at Piccadilly was Timmy on the Tranny, a popular weekday evening show that ran from 8.00pm–11.00pm and took its name from Mallett's lunchtime and later afternoon shows on Radio Oxford. Among Mallett's team of helpers were Chris Evans (known as 'Nobby Nolevel), Andy Bird (who played the pirate radio character 'Radio Diggle') and Karen Walsh (the original 'Aunty Boney kneecaps'). This led to Mallett co-presenting the Manchester-based BBC2 youth music show Oxford Road Show for a year in 1984. In March 1985 he also stood in for David Jensen on the Network Chart.

Mallett won two Radio Academy Awards for Best Local Radio presenter (1984) and Best pop music show (1986).^[2]

Television break

In 1983 he helmed Summer Run on Saturday mornings for the new breakfast television station, TV-am. The following year he became a presenter of Wide Awake Club, a new Saturday morning children's programme on TV-am, with co-presenters Michaela Strachan, James Baker, Arabella Warner and Tommy Boyd. Future actor Mike Myers also had a minor role alongside Neil Mullarkey. TV-am found itself lacking a school holidays programme after Roland Rat moved to the BBC, and he was offered the chance to present it. The replacement, a spin-off of Wide Awake Club, was called Wacaday (based on the addition of 'aday' to the initials 'WAC' for Wide Awake Club) and began broadcasting in 1985.

The programme was characterised by games such as "Mallett's Mallet", a word-association game where contestants were hit over the head by his famed mallet for getting answers wrong. In later years, a talking mini-version of the mallet called "Pinky Punky" was introduced (the name chosen after Mallett asked viewers to write in with their ideas) and soon became one of Mallett's established sidekicks along with Magic, his pet cockatiel. Wacaday ended in 1992 when TV-am lost its franchise to broadcast.^[3]

Since then, Mallett has run his own production company, Brilliant TV.^[4]

In 1993, Mallett starred in The Children's Channel's Around the World in 80 seconds as Captain Everything.^[5]

From 1997 until 2002, he acted in Timmy Towers, for CITV,^[6]

Recent work

In 2002, Mallett tried to force West Ham United F.C. to stop selling copies of their mascot, Herbie the Hammer, in their club shop after he complained that it looked too similar to Pinky Punky. West Ham United called the matter "trivial".^[7]

In 2004 he was a stand-in contestant for the ITV1 jungle-based reality series I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here!. He did not become a contestant on the show, but recorded a video diary of his exploits in Australia, the setting for the series, for the ITV2 companion programme I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! Now.^[8] In 2008 he entered the show as a full contestant.

From 2007, Mallett can be heard as the voice of Smelly Beep in the pre-school sitcom The Beeps on Five.^[9]

In 2008, Mallett appeared on Big Brother's Little Brother.^[10]

In September 2008 Mallett appeared on the BBC One politics show This Week talking about being positive when things get tough.^[11]

In November 2008 Mallett appeared in the eighth series of I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here!. He entered the show in a unique way: by being captured in an over-sized net and imprisoned in jungle jail. The celebrities were given an option to trade their possessions for him and David Van Day to enter. They refused. On 30 November 2008, Mallett was the fourth contestant eliminated from the show after being placed in the bottom 2 in the public voting and taking part in a (play-off) Bushtucker eating trial to Brian Paddick.^[12]

Music

With producer Andrew Lloyd Webber, Mallett formed the band Bombalurina, along with female vocalists/dancers Dawn Andrews and Annie Dunkley, and released a cover of the single "Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini". It reached no 1 in the UK charts in August 1990.^[13]

Follow up singles included "7 Little girls sitting in the backseat" which reached number 18 in the UK charts in December 1990.^[14]

The Bombalurina album "Huggin and a kissin" with 14 tracks was released in December 1990.^[15]

For "Tommy's campaign" Timmy recorded "The Laughing Policeman" with producer George Martin in 1991.^[16]

Under the name "Del Costa" Timmy released a megamix version of "Hot Hot Hot" in summer 1992.^[17]

In 2008 Mallett featured in Skepta's video "Rolex Sweep"^[18] and accompanied Skepta to the MOBO nominations.^[19]

In 2013 Timmy recorded Gilbert O'Sullivan's hit "ooh Wacadaoo Wacaday"^[20]

"Summer Holiday" video was made in 2014.^[21]

Stage shows

Mallett has appeared in pantomime in Lewisham theatre, Cliffs Pavilion Southend, Haxagon Reading, Derngate Northampton, Arena St Albans, Wyvern Swindon, Forum Billingham Pavilion Worthing Grand Pavilion Porthcawl Playhouse Weston-super-Mare.

While staying at Hartlepool Timmy rescued a woman from the marina in December 2001.^[22]

He toured the Pontins holiday camps with the "Utterly Brilliant Timmy Mallett show" in 2014.^[23]

Art

Mallett is an oil painter and acrylic artist whose work sells in galleries across UK and Europe.^[24] His work is distributed and published in limited editions by De Montfort Fine Art^[25]

In 2002, he painted 50 portraits for the Queen's jubilee including Wendy Craig, Jim Rosenthal, Lorraine Kelly, Ulrika Jonsson and Sir Clive Woodward.^[26]

In 2012, Mallett won the Best up and coming artist Fine Art Trade Guild.^[27]

In 2012 Mallett painted a telephone box in Windsor with likenesses of HRH the Queen, Prince Harry and Catherine the Duchess of Cambridge

Selected television programmes

• Oxford Road Show (1984)
• Wide Awake Club (1984–1988)
• Wacaday (1985–1992)
• Utterly Brilliant (1989–1991)
• Around the World in 80 Seconds (1993–1994)
• Way to Go (1996–1997)
• Timmy Towers (1997–2002)
• The Beeps (since 2007)
• I'm a Celebrity... Get Me out of Here! (2008 series)

References

External links

• Timmy Mallett at the Internet Movie Database
• Timmy Mallett official site timmymallett.co.uk
• Mallett's Palette official art site Mallettspalette.co.uk
• Wacaday TV show site Wacaday.co.uk