Zig and Zag (puppets)

Zig and Zag
'Dempsey's Den' character
Zig and Zag on Tubridy Tonight, 8 November 2008
First appearance	Dempsey's Den, 1986
Created by	Ciaran Morrison and Mick O’Hara
Information
Gender	Male

Zig and Zag are a puppet duo performed by Mick O'Hara and Ciaran Morrison.

The characters are a pair of furry extraterrestrial twins from the planet Zog. They made their television début in 1986 on RTÉ's Dempsey's Den. A year later they won a Jacob's Award for TV Personalities of the year. In 1992 Zig and Zag found fame in the UK when they joined the team of the Channel 4 breakfast show The Big Breakfast. During the 1990s the characters spawned a merchandising range of comic books, videos and embarked on a recording career – scoring a UK top five single with "Them Girls Them Girls".

In 2010 the characters saw a resurgence in their popularity as they joined the Big Brother's Little Brother team and in October 2010 they were commissioned to host a flagship Saturday morning radio show on 2FM called Smells Like Saturday. A brand new TV bloopers show hosted by Zig and Zag entitled Zig & Zag's Superbloopers was announced on the RTÉ TV website. In April 2015, it was announced that the duo would return in 2016 with a 26 episode animated series commissioned by RTÉ and the BBC.

Zig and Zag's full names are Zigmund Ambrose Zogly and Zagnatius Hillary Zogly and claim they were born 29 February 1971 on Zog. Zig is beige (although he claimed to be fawn) with red "zogabongs" (pom-pom antennae) and a tuft of green hair, and Zag is purple with green spots and yellow zogabongs and dreadlocks. In their original RTÉ incarnation, Zig often came across as the more intelligent one, with Zag under his thumb (most evident in their "Story Time" segments, when Zig would read a nursery rhyme to the audience, and Zag would grudgingly act it out). Zag also displayed a penchant for cross-dressing and playing with Barbie dolls. However, after the two moved to Channel 4, Zag began to be portrayed as the more intelligent older brother, a lecherous lady-killer who claimed to fly every weekend to Hollywood to dine with the stars, as well as performing ragga songs in his guise of "Ragga Zagga". Zig was then portrayed as a weak-willed childish simpleton, constantly giggling at rude jokes (like the word "bottom"), obsessed with specific things (such as The Hunt for Red October or his rash) and frequently unaware of what was going on around him.