Monster Café

It's Halloween so time to remember something aptly spooky.

"Monsters!
we're heavy and we're hungry,
monsters!
we're coming your way,
monsters,
we're stamping and a stomping,
and a moving and a grooving,
and a moaning and a groaning,
and you'll find us at the Monster Cafè!"

I bloody love that theme tune.

Monster Café children's comedy series that aired on CBBC in the mid 1990's. About the adventures of a group of spooky misfits who run a cafe especially for monsters, ghosts and ghouls. Serving the likes of slug sandwiches and spider milkshakes.

The three employees of said café were as follows...

Frankie (played by Isobel Middleton) a female robot/frankensteins monster. Complete with 80's hair and wardrobe.

Igor (played by David Shimwell) a hunchbacked Transylvanian bloke with a bad hygiene problem who was often making bizarre concoctions in the kitchen.

and finally Mummy (played by Toby Sedgwick) a 6,000 year old mummy with a bad case of rhotacism. "rummy, rummy rummy!"

The café was situated in the basement of a castle. Owned by the evil Baroness (played by Peta Lily) who was horrible to her employees. But often she got her comeuppance.

There were a few minor characters as well. There was Skull who sat in his little alcove in the wall and cracked bad jokes.

Vinny the Bin. Who was Igor's pet bin. Who loved eating rubbish and Igor's old socks.

And Chas, the cafe's regular customer. A sea monster with a brummy accent. Marvelous!

The opening titles pretty much tell you what you're in for. 15 minutes of sillyness. Episodes were humourous and slapstick in style. You could always expect some kind of explosion or custard pie to be chucked in an episode. I loved slapstick, so anything like that was appealing and anything involving monsters, spooks and ghouls was a definite winner for me. After all, Halloween has always been a favourite of mine!. Oh and after watching a few episodes, you too will start saying phrases like "monster me!" and "back in a monster mo!".

You have to love the monsters who visit the cafe and the costumes. There's a definitely a classic Doctor Who feel to them. I imagine bubble wrap, plastic sheeting and paper mache had a part in them.

Did I enjoy Monster Cafe? Oh yeah, definitely. The show only had two series of thirty episodes but the beeb got their mileage with them. They were repeated on BBC Choice a lot in the early 2000's and during early mornings on BBC 2 in 2005 before Cbeebies attempted to air them in 2007. Sadly they only got four episodes in to the run before having to pull it due to a torrent of complaints from angry mothers whose children were apparently terrified of the show. Which baffled me as from as early as I can remember I grew up watching the likes of The Trap Door, Count Duckula and of course Monster Cafe and I've turned out OK....I think.

Go on...watch an episode!

The Experimenter

OK, so the last few posts have been CITV heavy. So I thought I'd write about something BBC related. But I thought I'd discuss a show that was part of the beeb's schools programming in the 1990's. Seeing as I appeared to have watched an absolute shedload of these as well.

For some reason, there were occasions in my life, especially in the mid 2000's. Where I didn't sleep at a decent time and would sit up late watching the TV. But the only thing on would be BBC Learning Zone. Which would repeat all sorts of educational shows from their back catalogue. I distinctly remember Revisewise and of course Bitesize being aired a lot. But at one point they decided to air The Experimenter.

I'd originally seen this show during infant school. Where during rainy school play times. The teachers would sit us down in from of the television and stick in a video tape for us to watch. I distantly remember our school must have had no budget because instead of buying the official VHS releases advertised. They'd taped them off the telly. Bloody cheapskates *shakes fist*

I have to say, the first thing that makes me nostalgic with this show (and also another BBC Schools show from the same time called Cats Eyes) is the Primary Science ident. With the CGI spinning cogs and flowers.

The Experimenter was an educational series for kids all about science. Featuring the adventures of Sarah (Nadia Williams) and XP (Richard Braine). A slightly dense alien from another planet (although I don't think which planet was ever specified). Together they'd solve scientific questions with the aided help of XP's "smart specs" and Sarah's very 90's computer.

Can we take a moment to admire XP's supposedly futuristic costume? It's wonderfully rubbish. But they had a go. I do wonder if the shows budget was about £16.50 for the whole series and the bins behind the back of the Blue Peter studios had to be raided to make it.

I guess The Experimenter wasn't a bad watch. I quite liked the funky electronic theme tune used on the show. The series was made between 1994-1996 but repeats continued for about another decade.

You can find numerous episodes posted on Youtube.

Jason Maverick's Memories of Havakazoo

In my last blog post. I talked about the Channel 5's Milkshake programme Havakazoo. Which can be read here.

One of the presenters of the original series was Jason Maverick. Who has spent many years entertaining people all over the world. Performing juggling, mime and robotics. As well as appearing at events as a living statue!

Jason in his Havakazoo days

I recently sent an email to Jason and he very kindly agreed to do a Q&A for me about his days in kids telly...

First off. Can you tell me about your entertaining background?

I studied mime at The Desmond Jones school in London and that set me on a path of performing visual comedy around the world. 35 countries so far.

From reading your website. You've entertained a lot of celebrities and even The Queen! What was that like?

Entertaining The Queen was unique. I've entertained a lot of celebrities. George Harrison at his mansion etc etc. But entertaining The Queen did make me a little nervous.

Can you explain a bit about what Havakazoo was?

Havakazoo was set in a windmill and was based around the lives of three different types of artists and their interactions...plus of course the ever popular Messy The Robot!

Where did the name Havakazoo come from?

The show outline was devised by Look Lively TV and Channel 5.

How did you get the Havakazoo role? Am I right in thinking you wrote some of the material for it too?

My showreel was shown to them. Which highlighted all my physical comedy. They called me in for an audition to test me verbally and as luck would have it i'd written 50 kids poems about animals. They become the poems I used for the elephant puppet character. I devised all my solo routines on the programme and the slugs world scripts. Plus I helped with story outlines along with Gabrielle. The scripts themselves were written by the very talented Brian Jordan. 

Was the show good fun to present?

It was great fun, bonkers and very hard work with long filming days. 

I recall you presented a lot of segments about animals. They always say never work with animals...did anything go wrong?

Yes, we had a bat which wriggled out of my hands (I was afraid of crushing it) and it flew high in to the studio ceiling. The real bat man had to rescue it.

You presented the show along with Gabrielle Bradshaw and Vo Fletcher. Do you still keep in touch and remain friends?

Gabrielle is still a very good friend and Vo and I are very loosely in touch. 

Where was the show filmed?

Southampton Studios (The now demolished Meridian TV studios)

How many episodes of Havakazoo did you present?

156 episodes!

After a few series. Havakazoo relaunched with different presenters. How come you left?

I think they wanted to keep it fresh and change direction which was fair enough.

Since Havakazoo have you appeared in any other TV shows? If so, which ones?

I played Robot Dad opposite Harry Hill in the TV film. The Adventures of Professor Brainstawm.

Jason still continues to entertain the world.

A huge thank you to Jason for taking part and for providing the photos shown too. If you want to check out Jason's website. You can by clicking here

Havakazoo

For this next nostalgic memory. I'm delving deep in to the realms of long forgotten 90's kids TV shows. This time a programme which aired on Channel 5's Milkshake strand.

Channel 5 when it launched in 1997 was completely different to the Channel 5 now. They tried to make a lot more of their own shows. Not just late night entertainment shows but even their own game shows, soaps and even children's programmes. Something you don't see at all now. Shows like Whittle, Family Affairs, 100%, Beachcomber Bay and Night Fever are a long distant memory.

One of the children's programmes I distinctly remember watching quite regularly in these early days of Channel 5 was Havakazoo.

I guess the first thing I have to address with this programme is the theme tune. I don't think many theme tunes feature kazoo's as the main instrument. I think that should be more common practise. Shows like Newsnight and Casualty would benefit massively from it.

Oh and the theme tune is quite catchy. So catchy in fact. I've found myself singing it to myself on numerous occasions.

"Havakazoo,
We are the crew,
We're not sure what we're doing here
We haven't got a clue,
But we'll have some fun,
And so will you, 
Havakazoo, Havakazoo, Havakazoo"

Now this look back at Havakzoo would have been fairly difficult to do until recently as my memories of the show were a bit hazy after 20 years. But luckily for me and anyone else who remembers the shows. A kind Youtuber has recently uploaded a few editions of the show.

Havakazoo aired quite early in the morning if memory serves me right. The show was set inside a windmill and featured three presenters all of whom had a certain creative skill.

First off there was entertainer and street performer Jason Maverick.

Artist, Gabrielle Bradshaw.

And Musician, Vo Fletcher.

There was also a character called Messy. A robot who was half washing machine and half telephone. Who ran around the studio speaking in an incredibly high pitched voice. Messy was voiced and puppeteered by Jo Greco. Who had previously appeared in shows such as Emu's Pink Windmill Show, Spatz and Wizadora among many others.

Each 25 minute episode of Havakazoo would feature Messy reading out viewers letters. Musical numbers from Vo, Art and craft segments with Gabrielle and Jason would often demonstrate magic tricks, juggling and mime along with presenting segments about animals along with Messy.

At the end of the animal segments. A puppet elephant would pop up and tell an animal related poem.

Each segment in the show was transitioned with very surreal short sketches. Most of which featured a set of talking slugs.

There was also a story segment towards the end of the show. Where Messy would sneak off to his secret corner in the studio and tell a story to the viewers. Along with his friend Elephant (But this time a completely different elephant to the one seen earlier, confusingly).

There was also a segment called Nosey which is perhaps the one part of the show I remember really well. Nosey was an animated anthropomorphic walking camera that would go out and film and investigate various day to day outdoor activities. I vividly remember one episode taking place at a car wash but this has never surfaced online unfortunately.

Can I also mentioned that Nosey also had it's own awesome theme tune?

Some time later, another character was introduced to the show called Watchdog and then a few series later Jason, Gabrielle and Vo all left the show and were replaced by new presenters. Naomi Wilkinson and Andy Ford. Who played bakers Patrick and Patricia. The windmill set was changed to look like a bakery. I didn't watch the show as much by this point.

If memory serves me right. The show ran from 1997 until around 2000/2001. Despite that length of time it was on telly. It's extremely difficult to find anyone who remembers the show. Which is a great shame. Clips of the show have been rare online but as mentioned earlier Youtube user mrpokegan2 has uploaded a few episodes of the show. So a big thank you to them.

I enjoyed watching Havakazoo as a child and it's been nice to revisit the show once again. What I like about the show is it had a very improvised feel to it. Which is not a bad thing. Kids TV doesn't have to always be slick and have all the bells and whistles to be good. Sometimes keeping it simple and a spur of the moment idea is better. Havakazoo to me felt like a successor to shows such as Rainbow and Playdays. Each episode crammed in music, stories, educational pieces, comedy and art demonstrations. What more could you want?

If you would like to find out a little more about the show. May I recommend the excellent website of Joe Greco who has written in great detail the many shows he worked on in the 1990's. Both in front and behind the camera and has written about Havakazoo himself. The website can be viewed here.

"Havakazoo, Havakazoo, Havakazoo, HAVAKAZOO!"

Up next on the blog. A Q&A with one of the presenters of Havakazoo. Watch this space!