The Man From the Moon

So, the other day I delivered a talk at a Professional Development conference for my fellow regional librarians.

I decided to go for "entertaining and thought provoking" rather than informative, which in hindsight was not the most useful thing I could have done. I maintain the fact that I came up with the idea while I was on a plane and trying to avoid throwing up is justification for anything, and the fact that it was even remotely coherent was a bonus.

Anyway, I went with a "Mr Squiggle" gimmick, in that I had a whole pile of pictures with what appeared to be random lines and squiggles, which I then connected into actual pictures (a library building, an iPad, a horse, a wheel of cheese on wheels - appropriate library related stuff). These pictures would then be my "slides" and I talked to them instead of a PowerPoint presentation.

I even went to the bother of drawing everything upside-down and turning it over when I was finished (I should have had a volunteer from the audience as "Miss Jane" and had her turn them for me, but as I wasn't using my nose to draw these pictures I figured I could get away with other non-cannon elements).

I did ask everyone to help out a bit by calling out "Upside down! Upside down!" and "Hurry up!" They didn't, but I figured that was because they were boring. Or bored. One of those.

Anyway, quite a number of people spoke to me afterwards saying they enjoyed it, but they "missed out on Mr Squiggle" so couldn't really appreciate it.

To such comments I think the only appropriate response is:

"You what? How could you miss out on Mr Squiggle? The show ran for forty years! You never once saw it as a child? Your own children never saw it? You missed those strangely depressing Claratin ads that ran a couple of years ago? What were you doing between the years of 1959 and 1999?"

Most of these people seemed to be of the belief that the show ran for a brief window and was a) not on when they were children and/or b) not on when their children were children. Meanwhile, most of these people were children during the Miss Pat era, or had children of television age during the Miss Jane era. And some of them would have also had children or grandchildren around for Roxanne or Rebecca (I wonder why they were never "Miss Roxanne" or "Miss Rebecca"?).

Mr Squiggle was the longest running Australian children's show of all time - one of the longest running children's shows in the world - when it was cancelled in 1999. It's an important part of the Australian psyche. Many Australians think of themselves as being in the "Miss Pat" or "Miss Jane" generations.

When people tell me they somehow managed to get through 40 years without once catching an episode of Mr Squiggle... Well, that saddens me a little, it has to be said.

Also, why isn't there a decent, official Mr Squiggle website or something out there? ABC, given how much mileage you're getting out of those darn bananas, why aren't you trying to cash in on the greatest legend in Australian children's television?