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The entire Blobby thing became tiresome after a while, as the joke became repetitive and was pretty much bordering on one trick pony territory - if Blobby didn't fall over, break something or have an argument with Noel he'd trash the place instead. Unfortunately on the occasions where he appeared outside of the House Party (and I mean totally outside of it, not as an insert), that's all he did - trash the place, as that was pretty much the entire act. By the time he'd started appearing on TV Burp (and had a fight with Phil Mitchell over who was best at crashing through doors ) he had pretty much been away long enough to stop being irritating, but of course a leopard doesn't change its spots, and neither did Mr Blobby.

I liked him at the time in the 1990s but realistically outside of House Party he was a bit of a lost sheep. Still you know you're popular if you get number 1 in the UK charts. Especially at Christmas 1993.

I love Mr Blobby. I thought his getting to number 1 at Christmas 1993 was wonderfully and embarrassingly British.

I'll get my coat.

The problem with Blobby was that he was invented as a spoof terrible kids TV character and then somehow became an actual kids TV character. So it had no real merits except being awful and designed to wind up celebrities,but that got forgotten quite quickly.

As did the idea that the identity of the person inside was a massive secret, in the early gotchas he was seen without the head on and the actor named on-screen

Makes one wonder what we all loved about him. As I say, the act basically boils down to trashing the joint, which has two outcomes - if its accidental it's often funny. If its deliberate it often isn't. Blobby fell into the latter pigeon hole after a while. And then when they started fleshing him out a bit more (cue Mrs Blobby and Baby Blobby) it just became a tiresome excuse to "blob" everything, with endless puns and whatever else. Surprised they didn't go and build a full back story for him in the end, as they did everything else!

Blobby is great in small doses but not suited for a full length show.

An early example of BBC Two starting up in the morning, following further expansion of its daytime schedule in 1989, going through BBC Genome that year shows constant experimentation with its morning hours

I have a more cynical point of view. Whilst it was a spoof Childrens television character and a ruse for the Gotchas, it was also a calculated risk by Edmonds/Unique/BBC Worldwide that having a character existing within the bounds of a family programme, could be 'broken out' of the confinds of NHP, and in to proper kids programmes - as happened. And also, a few weeks before Christmas.

Then, offer out the image rights to third parties, licence all sorts of products, and get Blobby into the shops and make him a nice revenue earner for all involved.

Enjoyed this Kaleidoscope find, which seems to be from Bob Monkhouse's archive - ads and break flashes from ATV London in 1968.

Looks like it was converted similarly to those 60s clips that have been around for a couple of decades - a video camera pointed at an old 405 TV playing the video recording. Wonder if this was done recently and whether there’s a way of converting the tapes directly to a modern format.

I imagine many of those tapes have sadly properly disentegrated beyond repair. Which is a shame as many of these off-screen conversions are terrible, warped and with lots of overscan. That particular one is better than many, but it's still not great.

Just look at how much good comedy there was on BBC Two in Christmas 1997. Mad.

A shot there of TV Centre from the time they had the BBC1 and 2 logos on the wall outside.