Rag, Tag and Bobtail

Rag, Tag and Bobtail was a BBC children's television programme that ran from 1953 to 1965 as the Thursday programme in the weekly cycle of Watch With Mother. The scripts were written by Louise Cochrane, and the series was produced by Freda Lingstrom and David Boisseau. Narration was by Charles E. Stidwell, David Enders, and James Urquhart. The three main characters were Rag, a hedgehog; Tag, a mouse; and Bobtail, a rabbit; five baby rabbits also appeared occasionally. All the characters were glove puppets, operated by Sam and Elizabeth Williams. The stories were simple and there were no catch-phrases as there were in other programmes in the cycle, but the series is still remembered with affection. Twenty-six 12-minute episodes were made, two of which were never broadcast, each shot in a single take. In 1987, a Watch With Mother video was released by the BBC. The episode of Rag, Tag and Bobtail featured a scene in which Bobtail discovered that the baby rabbits had been playing in a muddy pool and had turned black. He was unable to clean them, but in the end the mud was washed off.