Viewers of British tv might remember
Rainbow, a children's show starring the puppet characters Bungle, Zippy, and George, and hosted by Geoffrey Hayes. Recently a
movie has been circulating around the web (you can also
see it here) purporting to show an episode of Rainbow that's heavily, heavily laced with sexual innuendo. Way too much innuendo to possibly be accidental. It's been dubbed the 'Rainbow Plucking Orgy' tape. It's very funny, but is it real? Was it ever really broadcast? According to the
Planet Gromit site, the tape is real, but it never aired. It was created as a joke and was not meant to see the light of day. I have no idea how it's surfaced now.
Comments
My findings have lead me to believe that the tape was originally put together by the cast as part of a christmas party joke. The footage was never intended to be released, but it appears that the archived tape has been dug up and put onto the internet with the pretence that it was actually broadcast as a real episode.
If I remember correctly though, the show originally ran for a minimum of 20 minutes, so there is no way that it was broadcast as an episode, as the footage is only 5 minutes long.
There is no evidence to suggest that there is dubbing involved - especially as the hand gestures and lip movements on closer inspection to accurately fit. Therefore I can only conclude that the christmas party theory is in fact true.
Thanks for linking to me by the way, although I'm only a lone blogger so all of this is in fact only hearsay.
In the 60's/70's (pre Internet,pre Home VCRs etc.) the Technicians behind the UK TV Stations (BBC and ITV) put together their own tapes to be played at their Christmas Party. Typically they contained the usual 'bloopers' but there was the occasional "Not for Broadcast" Segment that was put together, usually at the end of the day when the 'proper' taping was completed. The practice was largely ended in the late 70's / Early 80's as the TV Companies wanted to charge the Techs for the use of the TV equipment that was used to put the "Christmas Tapes"
Here is a link that explains it all in more detail
http://www.bvws.org.uk/405alive/faq/prog_trivia.html
http://www.funny.co.uk/fun-and-games/art_170-1865-Video-Clip-Rainbow-Innuendo-Episode.html
Hope that sheds some more light for you 😊
You can read my final compilation of the Rainbow facts by clicking on my name at the bottom of the post. Thanks again for all of your help.
While I believe it was a Christmas joke, I think a VT engineer must have swapped it out at some point during live broadcast or something.
I'd love to know the full story on this, because believe me, it was broadcast!
Andrew: The Christmas tape that Thames produced, the naughty Rainbow which has been featured on TV Offal where Victor Lewis-Smith said it was the "unscreened pilot."
Geoffrey: Victor Lewis-Smith or someone else
In fact it was a specially written sketch for the 1978 Christmas tape put together by staff at the London ITV station Thames Television.
There used to be a strong tradition of such Christmas tapes within British television, comprising of out-takes and contrived situations. Each ITV company would make their own and then swap copies with each other and they would be shown at the various Christmas parties.
However with the deregulation of ITV in the 1990's the companies no longer make programmes in-house tending to use private producers, so the opportunity to create such tapes has, sadly, long-gone.
You can see further Christmas tapes (including another featuring the Rainbow cast) at tv-ark.org.uk and meldrum.co.uk.
except meet the feebles was like 15 years AFTER this.