Here are the herbs

Today another writer shares their Animated Anecdotes

The Herbs

How Parsley The Lion and Dill the Dog won my heart

I am a child of the 1960s, when television for children was firmly rationed. The British Broadcasting Corporation not only put strict limits on the amount of time children could sit in front of the box, but called the segment ‘Watch with Mother’, the theory being that children had someone there to talk to about the content of the show, but it also seems a particularly sinister way of controlling the housewife: ‘no, you can’t just dump your child in front of the telly and have fifteen minutes to yourself’!

Anyway, the ‘Watch with Mother’ segment went out at 3.45pm Monday to Friday – that ‘difficult time’ for pre-school children between the afternoon nap and when their siblings got home from school (and started watching Blue Peter and Jackanory and Crackerjack, and all the other more sophisticated programmes). If it was only a fifteen minute slot, it had to be really good, high quality material, and as a consumer I can report that it was. The shows that I enjoyed were all animations of one kind or another, and included such gems as Pogle’s Wood, Camberwick Green and Trumpton. Later inventions such as Bagpuss passed me by. But my absolute favourite was The Herbs.

I now discover there were only 13 episodes of fifteen minutes made, and they were first transmitted (but no doubt often repeated) in 1968. That makes me five going on six. There was then a spin-off show, The Adventures of Parsley, which fitted into the five minute slot just before the news at 6pm. This launched in 1970.

Now that I can appreciate the star quality of the production team, I understand its power. The animator was Ivor Wood, who had been half of The Magic Roundabout team with Serge Danot. The script was written by Michael Bond, the creator of Paddington Bear, which was already a massive commercial success by 1968. Bond was emotionally attached to the BBC – this was the man who had left school at the age of 14 to become an engineer and then a cameraman at the Corporation. He continued to work there for several years after the Paddington books took off, resigning in 1965. The narrator, who did all the voices and songs, was the wonderful actor Gordon Rollings, and I am sure you will enjoy some of his other famous work …

Why has this series stayed with me for so long? There was some magic to the names, which as herbs meant nothing at all to a small child: Lady Rosemary, Sir Basil, Sage the Owl, Bayleaf the Gardener, and the stars of the show, Parsley and Dill. They all had their own little song

‘I’m a very friendly lion called Parsley’ sung in a lugubrious tone, and ‘I’m Dill the Dog, I’m a dog called Dill’ – a frantic little tune to accompany Dill chasing his tail. The whole thing was based in the garden of what I assume was a pretty rundown manor house, but which still employed a gardener. Not a set up you could imagine using today. The stories were simple, and like the humour of The Magic Roundabout and Paddington, quite sophisticated for such a young audience: the creators knew that it was important to give Mum something to laugh at as well. It never patronised: I’m not sure many current pre-school TV shows would base a joke on the word ‘penultimate’. And the password to enter the garden was ‘herbidacious’.

This to me is perfect children’s television: funny stories; kind people; and a gentle vocabulary stretching exercise. The tunes still run round my head when I garden and cook: ‘I’m Bayleaf I’m the gardener, I work from early dawn, you’ll find me sweeping up the leaves and tidying the lawn’, what a perfect little jingle!

PS: Michael Bond is everyone’s hero: he died in 2017 and is buried in Paddington Old Cemetery. The epitaph on his gravestone reads ‘Please look after this bear. Thank you.’