Muffin's 70th anniversary: Muffin The Mule - 70th Anniversary Thimble
Take a bow! Today marks the 70th anniversary of Muffin the Mule: https://t.co/DJMaRxeC1O 🐴💕 pic.twitter.com/ybB6CPFMST
- BBC Store (@BBCStore) October 20, 2016
To celebrate Muffin's 70th anniversary this week we're releasing some children's favourites from the archive! pic.twitter.com/roYwrFk1q6
- BBC Store (@BBCStore) October 17, 2016
Those of you of a certain age might remember Muffin the Mule - and this theme tune will probably take you right back to your childhood:
Muffin the Mule, is a puppet character in British television programmes for children. The original mule puppet was created in 1933 by Punch and Judy puppet maker Fred Tickner for husband-and-wife puppeteers Jan Bussell and Ann Hogarth to form part of a puppet circus for the Hogarth Puppet Theatre. The act was soon put away and the puppet was not taken out again until 1946, when Bussell and Hogarth were working with presenter Annette Mills. She named the puppet mule ‘Muffin’ and it first appeared on television in an edition of For the Children, broadcast on 20 October 1946. A separate series of 15- minute episodes Muffin the Mule, was broadcast from 1952, with his signature tune ‘We want Muffin’. The BBC decided to discontinue the show in 1955 after Annette Mills' death.
Click to viewThe much loved Muffin was the first children's TV character ever to appear on screens in this country.
And now he's come out of retirement at his Devon home and is preparing to go on tour - but needs someone to accompany him on stage.
The quest is on to make sure that Britain's first children's TV character has a cracking 70th birthday this year in June. Will McNally, the grandson of the original puppeteer and script writer Ann Hogarth, is now looking for a new accompanist, and wants people to post a video audition on his official Muffin the Mule channel.
Musicians are invited to audition by uploading a video of themselves playing the Muffin theme tune and sending the link to Muffin's very own youtube page.
The successful applicant will not join Muffin on tour but will also take part in the anniversary celebrations which are taking place at Pennywell Farm near Buckfastleigh.
If you still haven't had your appetite for nostalgia satisfied, here's another clip of Muffin making a bit of a racket on a drum:
Аудиосказка - Мафин и его весёлые друзья