Barney by Simon Mills
I hate Barney the dinosaur. His sickly, purple and green skin tones, his
creepy little arms and dazzling white Californian dentistry and his
side-kicks Baby Bop and BJ who look like the products of a nightmarish,
Chapman Brothers/Leigh Bowery collaboration.
I hate the loved-up, fun-policed, heavy-handed multiculturalism of the show's
message. I hate the way Barney's creators borrowed all the technical
know-how of Sesame Street and The Muppet Show and removed all the wit,
bludgeoning children with a barf-inducing cod educational mush and the
world's worst song “I love you, You love me, We're a happy family, With a
great big hug, And a kiss from me to you, Won't you say you love me too?”
which is the musical equivalent of putting your fingers down your throat.
The US forces knew what they were doing when they used it as a torture
weapon at Guantánamo Bay.
I hate Barney's oh-silly-me manner which is meant to be ever so adorable but
is actually just put there to provide an easy foil for the ghastly,
highly-caffeinated, preposterously-overacting stage-school brats who hang
around big dumb Barney making offensively cute, smart-arsed comments about
his unerring stupidity.
But mostly I hate Barney (“I hate him, he hates me, we are not a happy
family”) because his kiddie-centric political correctness invaded the nice
shouty mayhem of our house like a saccharine virus. My eldest actually met
him once (the photos still give me shivers). You do not know what hell is
until you have had to watch Barney's Christmas for the 700th time ... in
July.
The Tweenies by Damian Whitworth
“Hey, hey are you ready to play? It's time to come and play with the Tweenies.”
No it isn't. It is never time to play with the Tweenies. Not in my household
anyway. Not if I have anything to do with it.
OK, so that's big talk, but not entirely accurate. The very fact that the
world's most irritating children's programme ditty has burrowed into my
brain like a parasitic worm is evidence that I have been exposed to this
trash more often than is good for any person's sanity. What have I done to
my children?
The BBC normally exercises good judgment with its choice of children's
programmes. But the Tweenies is a cacophony of rot, featuring adults
supposedly playing children, shouting at each other and their audience and
prefacing every inane song and dance routine with cries of “Okaaaay!” and
reeeeeady?” No. I am not.
Zippy by Sarah Vine
As a child, my heart would sink when Rainbow came on the television. The
programme starred one of the most irritating characters ever conceived:
Zippy. He was smug, he was idiotic, he was rude. He was a revolting shade of
1970s orange. He was like the worst kind of party bore, all pleased with his
own cleverness. Worse still, he came with two idiot sidekicks, Bungle and
George. Bungle was prissy, George a bit thick. If it wasn't for The
Clangers, who knows what would have become of me.
Charlie and Lola by Alice Miles
“I Will Not Never Ever Eat a Tomato.”
How many parents have cursed that book? Charlie and Lola might have much to
recommend them, but for the parent trying to raise a healthy child, that
book has a lot to answer for. One of the most useful foods, base of so many
sauces, staple natural ingredient in every picnic and lunchbox, needlessly
condemned.
The Fimbles by Carol Midgley
There's no nice way of saying this:I believe the Fimbles to be the product of
a sick mind. It's not just the creepy, waddling bodies which suggest an evil
zebra has had its way with a Tellytubby. Or the cutesy-wutesy voices that
remind me of a smug couple who address each other in a similar way and
should be shot. It's the things that Fimbo, Florrie and Pom say, such as
“can you feel your topknot twitching”; “Can you feel your nose wrinkling?”
and “Where's my little one?” So they're either cocaine users or perverts,
right? I like a double-entendre as much as the next person, which is why I
enjoy the outrageously camp Big Cook Little Cook (geddit?) . But this isn't
camp, it's sinister. Like Jarvis Cocker once said “The Fimbles should have
been strangled at birth.”
Bob the Builder by Alice Thomson
by Alice ThomsonCan we fix it? No we can't. Not ever. It's just too dreadful.
I've tried my hardest, two of my children are fixated on Bob the Builder who
admittedly is the only one in Britain who manages to finish the job on time.
He's never sexist - although he should make an honest woman of Wendy. I have
watched the DVDs, read the books, slept with Scoop, Muck and Dizzy and my
son all squeezed into the same bed, but the charms of Sunflower Valley elude
me. But I know when I throw out the children's toys, the much-cherished,
half-mangled builder is the one I will have to keep.
Tracy Beaker by Richard Whitehead
It's not just the Seventies footballer curly perm that marks Jacqueline
Wilson's loathsome creation as the most irritating on our screens. Before
anyone jumps to the wrong conclusion, I am not sniffy about the trauma of
poor Tracy's dysfunctional background. It's just that whenever my
nine-year-old son affects a pre-teen pout or responds to a perfectly
reasonable request with a burst of “yeah, right” sarcasm, Tracy is to blame.
Basil Brush by Lesley Thomas
Can we lift the ban on foxhunting? Pleeease? Just for three minutes. I
wouldn't need a red jacket or pack of hounds, just an AK47 and a cackle. If
Basil were human, he would wear driving gloves - actually he would “don”
them - and offer unsolicited advice on your guttering. He would definitely
play golf.
He haunted my childhood with his adult-orientated one-liners. No one laughed
then, yet he is back on telly 30 years later to upset my offspring. Because
he isn't funny his scriptwriters gave him the catchphrase “Boom! Boom!” It's
a clever device used at the climax of his witticisms, a bit like “Geddit?!”,
but funnier because of the “bottom” connotation and alliteration. “Basil
Brush says ‘Boom Boom!' Do you see?!!” I'm told he was based on Terry
Thomas, and of course the one thing all six-year-olds love is a caddish
comic actor from the 1950s.
If you want to anthropomorphise a wild animal in a child-friendly manner, is
it not fundamental that the result should be cuddly? Imagine snuggling up to
Basil. He is pointy and scratchy on every level; just like Emu who has also,
unaccountably, been revived. Boom! Boom! BANG! BANG!
Post thoughts on your least favourite: timesonline.co.uk/alphamummy
