Bosco (TV series)
| Bosco | |
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Bosco
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| Created by | Raidió Teilifís Éireann (RTÉ) |
| Starring | Bosco |
| Country of origin | Ireland |
| No. of episodes | 386 |
| Release | |
| Original network | RTÉ2 (formerly Network 2) |
| Original release | 4 June 1979 – 2 September 1991 |
Bosco is a children's television programme produced during the late 1970s and 1980s. It was produced and shown by RTÉ in Ireland. Designed by Jan Mitchell, Bosco was voiced by Jonathan Ryan initially, in the pilot series that was broadcast, with four presenters per show, in 1979. When the show went into full-time production in 1980, with two presenters per show, Miriam Lambert took over. From the 1981 season onwards, Paula Lambert took over.
A shared cultural experience for children in Ireland at the time, it ran for 386 episodes, ending production in 1987. The show, however, was continually repeated before (and later during) The Den daily until 30 September 1996, when it was replaced by The Morbegs before officially ending on 1 May 1998.
Bosco (born 25 August), the main character in the programme, is a small red-haired puppet, supposedly a five-year-old child with bright red cheeks and a real squeaky voice. Bosco's gender was ambiguous. Bosco and the other presenters usually spoke English, but (to help young children learn Irish) Bosco often peppered English speech with Irish phrases, much as Dora the Explorer often speaks Spanish.
Bosco lived in a brightly painted wooden box (hence the name: Irish bosca="box"), only ever wandering far from it to go on excursions to such places as Dublin Zoo or the HB Ice Cream factory.
On 9 May 2011, on The Ray D'Arcy Show on Today FM, Bosco let slip that he is a boy, saying that they kept his gender a secret for 33 years.
The roster of presenters included Marian Richardson (now an RTÉ programme producer), Frank Twomey (later of Bull Island), Grainne Uí Mhaitiú, Philip Tyler, Susie Kennedy, Gertrude Kerrigan, Mary Garrioch, David Byrne, Marcus O'Higgins and Peter Fitzgerald. Philip Tyler preceded Brian Dowling as the first openly gay children's TV presenter, though this was not widely known during the 1980s.
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