Mr Blobby, ‘Mr Blobby’: The monsters of Saturday night

Mr. Blobby
‘Mr. Blobby’

Highest UK Top 40 position:
Number One on December 5, 1993

1. Blobby blobby blobby

Abandoned theme parks are the creepiest places in the world.

They’re much creepier than graveyards. A graveyard is meant to be still and solemn, but theme parks are built for brightness and laughter. When a theme park falls silent, it feels like the place itself has died.

YouTube has many videos of urban explorers poking around in the bones of abandoned theme parks. Nature is quick to reclaim these places, weeds and ivy swallowing the colourful old buildings as dead-eyed mascots stare at nothing, waiting for children who will never return.

In one such video, explorers visit a dead theme park in the Somerset countryside. They find an old cottage hiding in a forest, its walls a hideous shade of pink, almost the colour of flesh. Inside, the cottage has been devastated. Souvenir hunters have ripped out everything of value; squatters and ravers have destroyed the rest.

On the wall, someone has painted an accusation:

On another wall, in strangely neat writing, is a more specific allegation:

This is Blobbyland, once the heart of an empire once known as Crinkley Bottom.

2. No road too long, no tide too strong

In the early 90s, British TV was terrorised by a dead-eyed monster with a disturbing voice. But enough about Cilla Black, let’s discuss Noel Edmonds.

Edmonds joined BBC in the 70s as a radio DJ, part of a new wave of talent tasked with invigorating the stuffy old broadcaster. Noel had the energy of an American gameshow host, with loud clothes and a smarmy, brash charisma. He was a proto-yuppie, waiting impatiently for the 80s to begin.

When the Reagan era finally arrived, Noel got his chance at primetime TV. The Late Late Breakfast Show was a variety show broadcast live on Saturday evenings, with a manic mix of gags, games, and celebrity guests. One of his innovative features was a segment called “Give It A Whirl”, in which Noel phoned a random person and challenged them to perform a death-defying stunt.

“Give It A Whirl” made for gripping TV. It was thrilling to see ordinary people do extraordinarily dangerous things, although you assumed that Noel had everything under control. Surely the BBC would never put an audience member in real danger?

But “Give It A Whirl” had shockingly poor safety standards, with multiple injuries over the year. One woman participated in a human cannonball stunt and was left with a broken shoulder. Afterwards, she told the press that, “The BBC don’t give a damn.” The government’s Health & Safety Executive intervened to stop another stunt that would have involved “plucking a member of the public from an exploding chimney by helicopter.”

In 1986, a viewer named Michael Lush was selected for “Give It A Whirl”. His stunt involved bungee jumping from a crane that was exploding behind him. No safety officers were present at Lush’s rehearsal, and the stunt coordinator had never performed this kind of jump. Lush’s bungee cable failed, and he fell 120ft to his death.

Noel Edmonds wasn’t personally liable, but The Late Late Breakfast Show was immediately cancelled, and he disappeared from primetime TV.

For a while.

3. No end to his talents, no sense of balance

In the early 90s, British light entertainment was a godforsaken hellscape, especially on Saturday evenings. When Obi-Wan said, “You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”, he could have been looking at the weekend listings in Radio Times.

Jimmy Savile, a literal monster, owned the early evening slot with Jim’ll Fix It. Michael Barrymore had a light-hearted variety show called Barrymore that ran alongside his various gameshows. That ended in 2001 when a man was sexually assaulted and possibly murdered in Barrymore’s house, a case that’s still unsolved. Snooker show The Big Break was hosted by Jim Davidson, who’s been dogged ever since by accusations of racism. And Cilla Black… well Cilla was just a horrible person.

In 1992, Edmonds rejoined the ranks of Saturday Night Light Entertainment. Noel’s House Party was effectively a reboot of The Late Late Breakfast Show, but with a loose storyline about the fictional village of Crinkley Bottom, a place D-list celebs got up to zany antics. Noel’s presentation style hadn’t changed, although now there was an occasional hint of flop-sweat desperation.

House Party did not have stunts, thankfully. Instead, it leaned into hidden-camera pranks. British audiences and celebrities living in constant terror of Noel jumping out and screaming, “Gotcha!”

(There was a segment called NTV where Noel placed a camera in a viewer’s living room and started talking to them through their TV. It was fun, but it’s also quite literally Nineteen Eighty-Four.)

In Season 2 of House Party, Noel pulled a series of intricate pranks on celebrities like dancer Wayne Sleep, footballer Garth Crooks, and rugby lad Will Carling. The victims were invited to shoot a new BBC kids’ show called Blobbyland with a huge, pink character called Mr. Blobby.

Each celebrity would try to teach Mr. Blobby a new skill, but Blobby would be increasingly useless. When the celebrity was about to snap, Edmonds appeared and revealed it was all a prank.

The joke was massively popular and helped House Party soar to 15 million weekly viewers. Soon, Mr. Blobby was a celebrity in his own right.

4. He’ll show the world a thing or two

Quick personal aside: I’m not actually British, so I haven’t seen a lot of British TV.

Some British shows were rebroadcast in Ireland, including The Late Late Breakfast Show, which I really enjoyed as a kid, until the Michael Lush tragedy. After that, Noel Edmonds largely vanished from Irish TV screens.

The next time I saw anything vaguely related to him was on Christmas Day, 1993. I was (as discussed previously) a big fan of another imported BBC show, Top Of The Pops, and I was eager to see who would be this year’s Xmas Number One. The odds were on Take That, who were top of the previous week’s chart.

Take That did not win. They were Number 2. The festive champion was some weird, pink monstrosity with a truly terrible song. It was the first time I had ever seen Mr. Blobby, and I was very confused.

If you’re not British and you don’t understand Mr. Blobby… I can’t really help you. I don’t understand him either. He seems to be cross between Mr. Bean and a Dalek. He looks like a diseased penis. British people could not get enough of him.

Blobby became a regular character within the kayfabe of Noel’s House Party, functioning as Noel’s…Servant? Child? Pet? It’s hard to explain unless you were there, and I was not there. I’ve watched some old episodes of House Party on YouTube, and I feel I understand it even less. Maybe this was connected to the Mad Cow Disease crisis? I can’t rule it out.

Blobbymania swept the nation, and the Number One song was followed by a truly heinous album, a video game, and several landfills of pink-and-yellow tat. Edmonds, who owned most of the House Party IP through his company, Unique Group, even opened a series of Crinkley Bottom theme parks around the U.K.

The first two parks were actually reasonably successful, but things fell apart when Edmonds opened a third in Morecambe. Residents protested against the impact on their community. Meanwhile, visitors loudly complained about the park’s poor facilities.

The low point came when Morecambe council sued Edmonds, accusing him of lying about the park’s potential. Edmonds fought back and won, earning almost £1 million in damages. This turned out to be a pyrrhic victory. “Blobbygate” cost Morecambe council £2.5 million in total, and that bill was ultimately covered by taxpayers—the same taxpayers who funded all BBC programming, including Noel’s House Party. It was not a good look for Edmonds.

All three Crinkley Bottom parks closed in 1996. Mr. Blobby was dropped from House Party in 1997. And in 1999, after a steep decline in viewing figures, Noel’s show was cancelled. This time, he really was gone from Saturday night TV.

5. When disaster strikes you never get depressed

But you can’t keep a mediocre man down.

In 2005, Channel 4 launched their version of a Dutch gameshow called Miljoenenjacht. The show is mind-bogglingly stupid: contestants open boxes at random, but with lots of dramatic pauses to make it feel like something is actually happening.

Deal Or No Deal turned out to be a sensation. In fairness, that success was down to Edmonds, who was eerily intense when talking to “The Banker”, who seemed to exist Tyler Durden-style in Noel’s head. Edmonds was back on top.

Sky gave him a magazine show called Noel TV that focused on consumer rights and political issues. It was intended to be in the spirit of Esther Ranzen; it ended up more like Howard Beale. Edmonds tended to go on Facebook Uncle-style rants when given the opportunity, and the show was quickly cancelled after he launched a personal attack on one local council employee.

This was, finally, the end of a TV career full of highs and lows. In recent years, he’s more of an entrepreneur with business ideas like, “What if there was a radio station for dogs?” As of 2023, Edmonds is in New Zealand, yelling at Kiwi council workers. The man really hates local government.

Mr. Blobby, meanwhile, has passed through the irony machine to become something of a beloved national treasure. He makes guest appearances in bizarre places, most recently having joined Self Esteem onstage at one of her London gigs. Take That fans haven’t forgiven him for Xmas 1993, but he’s generally beloved.

Blobbyland and the rest of the Crinkley Bottom sites were demolished a few years ago. That’s probably for the best. It would be distressing to imagine those gaudy, pink structures rotting in the forest forever, waiting for an audience that will never return.

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