Wacaday ( TV Series 1985 - 1992 )





 

Plot

Wacaday was a children's television series in the UK that ran in TV-am's school-holidays slot from 1985 until 1992, in an 8:50-9:25 a.m. slot, and was hosted by Timmy Mallett.

 

Wacaday was introduced because Roland Rat, the puppet host of TV-am's previous holidays slot, had been sold to the BBC to ease the troubled station's financial difficulties. With only one week until the new show was due to start, it was decided to produce a spin-off of the already successful Saturday morning programme, Wide Awake Club. Timmy Mallett, the best-known presenter of Wide Awake Club, was chosen to front the new show. The "wac" of the title took the initials of Wide Awake Club.



Each day, Timmy would be joined by two children in the studio, who would compete in Mallett's Mallet and help throughout the show. As it was a last-minute replacement for Roland Rat, the initial 1985 run consisted of basic features and competitions, basically being an extension of Wide Awake Club. However, from its second run in 1986, things quickly began to develop.

 

The programme was similar in style to Wide Awake Club, being live and featuring items such as the word-association game 'Mallett's Mallet' and 'Drop Your Toast', where Timmy would read out a viewer's name in the hope that they would be so shocked that they would drop their toast. From 1987, every series (there were six a year - one for each school holiday) would be themed around a different country that Timmy had visited. Pre-recorded reports from these countries would educate viewers about the country's culture, customs and history (though in a humorous way, including Timmy often acting out famous scenes from that country's past). In later series, the studio set was also decorated in the particular country's theme.



Other regular features included a narrated story about the adventures of Magic, Timmy's cockatiel, various phone-in quizzes (typically at the end of the programme) where a selected viewer would compete in some gunge-related competition, and a short five-minute cartoon, such as Batfink or Dick Tracey. Although there were various minor items that appeared and were retired over the years, the overall structure of the series remained the same throughout the show's life.



 

The self-proclaimed 'show your telly was made for' was even more successful than Wide Awake Club and is the programme for which Timmy Mallett is best remembered. In fact, many of Timmy's trademarks, such as his giant pink mallet, Magic, Pinky Punky (introduced in 1990) and Timmy's 'bleugh!' catchphrase originated on Wacaday. The "bleugh" saying actually originated from the rules of Mallet's Mallet, where Timmy would hurriedly repeat the rules every day. On one occasion early in the feature's life, he fluffed the lines and came out with "bleugh" - and from there, the catchphrase was born.

Michaela Strachan co-presented the show with Timmy for two spells, in 1987 and 1989.

 

Later on in Wacadays run, Mallett's infamous routine of hitting people over the head with his giant foam mallet was changed slightly, particularly in the Mallett's Mallet game, where he would instead hit large buttons on a machine to keep score, as the producers feared that young viewers at home might try and copy the routine by hitting people over the head with heavy objects.

The programme outlived its parent by two years, but ended in 1992 when TV-am lost its franchise. The last episode was broadcast on 31 December 1992, the final day of TV-am's broadcast - GMTV took over on 1 January 1993.