Pinky and Perky
| Pinky and Perky | |
|---|---|
Pinky and Perky as they appeared on their original BBC TV show
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| Genre | Children's television series |
| Created by | |
| Presented by |
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| Country of origin | United Kingdom |
| Original language(s) | English |
| Production company(s) | Thames Television (1968-1972) |
| Distributor | BBC Television (1957–1968), ITV (1968–1972) |
| Release | |
| Original network | BBC1 (1957–1968), ITV (1968–1972) |
| Picture format | 405 lines (1957–1969) PAL (576i) (1969–1972) |
| Audio format | Monaural |
Pinky and Perky is a children's television series first broadcast by BBC TV in 1957, and revived in 2008 as a computer-animated adaptation.
The title characters are a pair of anthropomorphic puppet pigs, named Pinky and Perky, who were originally going to be named Pinky and Porky but there was a problem registering Porky as a character name. This was solved by Margaret Potter, the wife of their producer, Trevor Hill, who also discovered them, when she woke him up one night announcing "I've got it! Pinky and Perky!" They were created by Czechoslovakian immigrants Jan and Vlasta Dalibor who moved to the village of Hundhill, leaving the pigs under the cupboard in The Bungalow. The characters of pigs were chosen because the pig is seen as a symbol of good luck in the former Czechoslovakia. The puppets, who had only very limited movements, looked very alike. Pinky wore red clothes and Perky wore blue, but this distinction was of little use on monochrome TV, so Perky often wore a hat.
Pinky and Perky spoke and sang in high-pitched voices, created by re-playing original voice recordings at twice the original recorded speed; the vocals were sung by Mike Sammes while the backing track was played at half normal speed (Sammes did the same job for Ken Dodd's Diddymen, as Ross Bagdasarian did for the original Chipmunks in the early 1960s)—hence the expression "Pinky and Perky speed", when an LP record is played at 45 rpm or 78 rpm instead of the correct 33⅓ rpm. Pinky and Perky would often sing cover versions of popular songs, but also had their own theme song, "We Belong Together".
They had their own fictional TV station "PPC TV". They also performed comedy sketches usually with a human foil (similar to Basil Brush). Actor John Slater worked with them as a straight man for many years, enduring soakings from water pistols and similar pranks. Other human companions included Roger Moffat, Jimmy Thompson, Bryan Burdon and Fred Emney.
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