@Skaffen @chris

I'll make it even more of a nightmare for you in just 3 words:

Nigel Farage's nipples.

(-:

@cstross

#MrBlobby #NigelFarage

@strypey

'Buffoon' means clown, or jester, or fool, and comes from the Italian word for one.

@delanthear @aspragg @edchivers @cstross @JamesPadraicR

#MrBlobby #EnglishLanguage

@cstross @delanthear @aspragg @edchivers @JamesPadraicR

I think that we can thank _Game for a Laugh_ and _Beadle's About_ for the addition of cruelty to the character. They made that sort of thing mainstream. Candid Camera was not as invested in making people suffer, as I remember it.

Had it not been for them, Blobby would have been the Phantom Flan Flinger but with a Christmas number 1 single and a BBC budget. TPFF never pranked unsuspecting people who thought that they were on some other show or doing something else.

People got a stunt pie in the face from a taxi driver, or Jim Davidson's chauffeur, or an ATV reporter; but they did so knowing that that was part of the #Tiswas format when they were booked.

#JimDavidson himself was TPFF — exactly once. Probably for the best that it stopped there, I think.

https://youtube.com/v/UQpz3-5uuFQ

#MrBlobby #JeremyBeadle #NoelEdmonds #PhantomFlanFlinger

@http_error_418 @delanthear @aspragg @edchivers @JamesPadraicR

That's a good point. And that goes back to the 17th century and beyond.

Although, as I'm about to reply to @cstross , I think that we can thank something else for some specifically Blobby characteristics that xe has mentioned, which are not I think in #PunchAndJudy.

#MrBlobby #UKTelly #NoelEdmonds

@delanthear @aspragg @edchivers @cstross

We've had a long tradition of jesters and fools and clowns, and really Blobby is just more of the same. It's just that I don't think that we had them on the telly with such saturation until Edmonds came along. We didn't have them making records, or invading other people's stuff, or merchandising.

By the way: If U.S.A. people tell you that they never had this, politely remind them that The Banana Splits existed 25 years before Blobby was invented.

♪ Tra La-La. La-la La La.
♪ Tra La-La. La-la La La.

You know that you just winced, U.S.A. people. (-:

@JamesPadraicR

#NoelEdmonds #MrBlobby #UKTelly #TheBananaSplits #USTelly