Feel the Wiggle factor

They look as if they’ve all been involved in events that should be re-created in the opening sequence of each show, just to give us the back story on what we’re seeing. Murray Wiggle looks as if, as the result of losing a bet, he has to use his face to shunt trams along, while Anthony looks as if he was raised in a pet shop until the age of majority. Greg appears normal until he turns sideways, at which point you realise that the back of his head forms a perfect right angle. And Jeff looks like a random frame taken from the interface morphing sequence in the Michael Jackson video for Black or White.

Of course, in case any of the Wiggles’ mothers are reading this, I feel I should explain my political stance on the word “ugly”. All beautiful people look the same to me, except Thierry Henry, whom I remember because of his likeness to the Pink Panther. All the rest just look like a big block of square teeth and eyes, garnished with ironed hair. I can’t imagine how confusing it must be to be one of Them. They must wake up in the morning, look at themselves in the mirror and go: “Which one am I? Am I one of Atomic Kitten? Or that one off Hollyoaks? Or am I Tina Hobley?”

I presume that this homogeneity is why all beautiful people are obsessed with being famous — it’s their one big chance of finally being identified on the street by friends and acquaintances. Personally, I don’t think it’s good for children to be entertained by beautiful people — it shows in their eyes that they’re just using children’s TV as a springboard into nude modelling and I’m a Celebrity . . . Get Me Out of Here! I think children need the sense, such as was provided for my generation by John Craven, that he would be here for us, fully clothed and sensibly D-list, for the rest of his life.

And besides, kids make you rough. They suck the vitamins out of your marrow just by looking at you. Let’s not pretend otherwise.

Anyway, the children watching The Wiggles aren’t wasting a morning defining their politics when it comes to the use of the word “ugly”. They’re just enjoying Murray, the tram-shunting Wiggle, expressing a truly benign and enlightened joy in singing: “If you Wiggle you can’t go wrong/ A Wiggle will make you big and strong.”

Murray is by far my favourite Wiggle, although the recent development of Jeff’s recurrent narcolepsy — “Jeff, wake up!” — has endeared him to me greatly.

All four Wiggles met while studying Early Childhood Education in Sydney, which explains why they’re all so hot at instilling manners into The Wiggles’s resident pirate, Captain Feathersword. He often rudely tries to interrupt the jam sessions on the Wiggle Porch with Murray’s red guitar. “It’s the Wiggles!” the Captain says, waving his sword wildly. “Arrrr! Arrrr!”

“You should always say ‘Excuse me’, Captain Feathersword,” Murray chides, rather mildly.

In the end, Feathersword becomes so good with his manners that the Wiggles let him sing Hot Potato with them, which is pretty much the best song ever about hot potatoes, during which Murray’s face looks enlightened and benign.

Of course, the Wiggles occupy one end of the spectrum in Australian children’s television — the end that encompasses calm and intelligence and Early Childhood Education. At the other end is Nathan Foley of Hi-5.

In the late Eighties the BBC ran a drama series called Chimera, about a child whose mother was an ape artificially inseminated with human sperm. Over six episodes the debate raged over what possible future a creature that was half-man, half-ape could hope to have in its adult life. What job would it have? How would it find its own identity?

“Hi, I’m Nathan, and welcome to Hi-5!”

Foley is the most heterosexual man in the world. There’s so much testosterone in his body that his brain must have turned into a giant grilled steak with all the trimmings. He is the man for whom the phrase “110 per cent” was invented.

To watch Foley pretend to be a small red racing car driving furiously around a track is to see the only man in the world capable of dying in an imaginary car crash. His conga is like viewing an act of war. When reading the listing in the Radio Times and seeing that “Today, Nathan dresses up as an ice cube and learns that they float”, you fear for shipping.

Nathan isn’t alone on Hi-5, of course — there are another Hi 4 with him. Kellie is “the blonde”, Kathleen is the Asiatic sexpot, Tim is the packed lunch if the Hi-5 plane ever crashes into the Andes, and the vivacious Charli is a bit taller and gingerer than the other girls, and so gets lumbered with all the rubbish songs. It was Charli who had to find a way through Pop Star Parrots , as well as deliver the lyric: “I’m jump jump jumping in my sack.”

But it’s Nathan who stirs all the viewers’ emotions — including the fight-or-flight response — every morning. His song Little Wumpy Woo (“You won’t believe the things I can do/ Little Wumpy Woo!”) gives us perhaps a little taste of the man’s parallel career as a singer-songwriter, as detailed on nathanfoley.com.

Alas, there are no MP3 files to download, and going to buy his album in a shop would clearly be preposterous. But any man who can dress up as a giant yellow pencil and sing “I’m ready to paaaaarty!” while drawing a picture of the sun with his head is clearly going to be more fun to have in the charts than, say, Blazin’ Squad.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK

IT’S A close run between Michelle on BB: “Hello, this is Big Brother. We have skankified your bed with the usage of eggs”; and the horse in I am Not an Animal. It has been freed from a luxurious vivisection clinic against its will. “Your instincts will tell you what to eat and where to find it,” its liberator says. “Eggs Benedict, Café Rouge,” the horse replies, patiently.

HERE’S LOOKING AT ME

I’M TOUCHED by how much thought has gone into the latest Big Brother. The masterstroke was to closet the two stupidest housemates in a separate house, make them watch the footage on E4, and film the results. Their comments on the programme that they’re still a part of have been a thrilling blend of post-modernism and Beavis and Butthead.