Zippy

Puppet from Rainbow, ITV, 1972 – 1992

The most memorable character to come out of Rainbow. Zippy was loud and brash with a zipper along his mouth. It can’t have taken too long to come up with the name.

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Rainbow set the ground rules for almost every show that would ever appear on CBeebies. Bright colours, a mix of human and puppet characters. Of those puppet characters some were recognisable anthropomorphic versions of real world toys like Bungle the giant Teddy bear. But others were totally made up and when you write a description down of them they sound bonkers.

So to Zippy, he was the made up character. What exactly was Zippy, bright yellow, massive static blue eyes. No nose. Oh yeah and a giant zipper across his mouth of all things. Who knows who came up with that idea but I suspect a frustrated parent with a noisy child.

Zippy was that noisy child on Rainbow. He was the loud mouth who always had something to say and yes he could often be naughty too. Despite having free will he pretty much always was found alongside George (nothing to do with them sharing puppeteers I’m sure).

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When it comes to disecting puppet characters from a children’s television show you watched nearly 40 years ago Zippy is the easiest to remember. With his stand out personality and his free will to not always behave as he’d be expected to by geoffry.

Plus he had that zip right across his mouth and yes sometimes it got pulled to shut him up – the one thing as a kid you were really hoping would happen because, well it’s funny.

Was it funny though? Poor Zippy not only being born with a zip across his mouth also seemed to be completely incapable of undoing it once pulled meaning all that he could do was lean on his on arm looking sorry for himself.

I have to say, looking back as an adult that Zippy, and all the characters in Rainbow for that matter, didn’t really have much they could do with their faces and yet with a mix of puppeteers skills and great voice work from Roy Skelton, they managed to get the most personality of Zippy.

So much so that Zippy was a cult figure amongst celebrities of the time and around ten years after Rainbow finished he began popping up in adverts and then later making cameo appearances in things like Life on Mars.

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When attempts to revive Rainbow were made in the mid-90s both Zippy and George made it through pretty much as they were except they suddenly now had two arms and different voices ruining the whole thing. Not that I watched of course I would have been too old. Not that I’ve watched more recently on YouTube either, honest.

Zippy would have been every kids favourite mainly because he was naughty. I’m sure the adults loved it too because he said exactly what everyone else was thinking.