Tainted Glove

In this world of CGI and hi tec entertainment, let's hear it for all those puppets that are - how can we say it without offending them - a bit home made. No expensive servos and animatronic gismos for them - just a man or woman with their hand stuffed in a glorified sock.

So I offer up my personal top four glove puppets:

• PG Monkey has demonstrated incredible resilience after his career was all but wrecked by the collapse of ITV Digital. Now he's back and on a desk near you.


• Flat Eric, whose career peaked with the famous Levis advert, but has since made a number of comeback ads including one with David Soul for Auto Trader.


• Zippy of Rainbow fame and constant companion to George. It was recently revealed that Zippy was involved in a video nasty back in the 70s, but has refused to comment publicly about this.


• Fingermouse - the most famous of the Fingerbobs, and made by 70s kids everywhere.

Also worthy of nomination are Emu, Zig and Zag, Lamb Chop, Basil Brush, Gordon T Gopher, Posh Paws and the entire cast of Button Moon.

I'd like to make a special mention of Hi!Monkey even though he is not a TV celebrity (as far as I know) he has several articles written about him. Hi! (if I can call him that) informs me that he is a terrycloth monkey and not a polar bear as previously reported. Sorry if I hurt your feelings Hi!, and you do raise a very valid point on the lack of dexterity among polar bears. This is probably why they never unwrap Penguins before eating them...

Notable omissions from the roll call are: Sooty, Roland Rat, Orville and Tony Blair who are all gits and I hate each one of them with a passion.

Regrettably I had to omit all Muppets, Aardman characters, Spitting Image and Gerry Anderson creations because they were too sophisticated, at least when compared to a sock.

Feel free to nominate any of your own favourites.