:.Puzz1ed P1ace.:

Ever wondered what the words to this nursery rhyme are all about?

Half a pound of tuppenny rice,
Half a pound of treacle.
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.
Up and down the City road,
In and out the Eagle,
That’s the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.

‘weasel’ refers to the cockney rhyming slang ‘weasel and stoat’, meaning coat, and ‘pop’ is slang for ‘pawn; so the line ‘pop goes the weasel’ could equally be ‘go pawn your coat’!  After all that rice and treacle, not to mention a swift half down at the Eagle on City Road in North London, finances were obviously a little tight!

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Contrary to popular opinion, Humpty Dumpty was not an egg, but a cannon, used in the English Civil War.

‘Humpty Dumpty’ sat on the wall besides St Mary’s Church until a Parliamentary cannon destroyed part of the wall, causing ‘Humpty Dumpty’ to fall. The “Kings Men” (aka Royalists, Cavaliers) attempted to put the cannon back on another part of the wall but, due to the weight, they could not “put Humpty together again”

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Reproduced from “Toonhound”

Bob was created by advertising artist Keith Chapman back in the late 1980s. He’d spied a JCB on a building site one day and thought it might be fun to bring it to life with cartoon eyes. That JCB became Scoop. Other machines followed. Then of course, the vehicles need a human operator, and so Bob was created together with a labourer mate called Lenny. In his original guise, Bob was actually an older character and he sported a macho moustache.

Keith used to tell his children bedtime stories featuring moustachioed Bob and the crew. At the time, however, no one was interested in the concept as a commercial vehicle.

Eventually, Keith brought his long-gestating project to HIT Entertainment, and it was they who developed it into the series we know today. They even formed their own in-house studio, HOT animation, to bring the show to life. The company took a pilot to Cannes in 1996 and acquired a development deal from the BBC and from thereon, HIT’s Kate Fawkes, Jackie Cockle of HOT and designer/illustrator Curtis Jobling worked the project through the rest of the developmemt process.

Bob soon lost that moustache. He also became younger. Then Lenny was dropped, and Wendy stepped in to his shoes. But she too developed. Originally, she was a dizzy secretary-type. Fortunately, one of the more drastic changes never came to fruition. It was a change requested by the BBC and it called for the machines to be made mute – talking machines being a most illogical concept. The production team spent three months rewriting scripts but thankfully for us, the new stories had lost their sparkle so the BBC honchos were persuaded to drop their request!

The series eventually premiered on the BBC 12th April 1999, and Keith, HOT and HIT haven’t looked back. By the end of 2000, Bob had been sold to 108 countries and £60m of licensed products had been sold.

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So, a little ‘teaser’ to get the new category going. Who, or what, is/was “Humpty Dumpty” of Nursery Rhyme fame?

No need to put the answer on a postcard: just post it as a comment.

Answer in a few days

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Something that’s been puzzling me more and more lately…. just what is the relationship between Bob the Builder and Wendy? Does anyone know?

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