Dickie Knee

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Dickie Knee was a puppet character on the Australian television show Hey Hey It's Saturday. He was voiced by voiceover artist John Blackman, who also appeared as himself and as many other characters.

Dickie was intended to be a small boy with a nasal voice and a racy sense of humour, who would appear unannounced before a presenter's desk during the show every so often to ask cheeky questions or offer his particular brand of insight. The puppet effectively functioned as an avatar for Blackman's naughtier humour.

[edit] Appearance

The puppet consisted of little more than a blue hat and a wig with black curly hair mounted on the end of a stick. This led to plenty of innuendo about Dickie's stick. The puppet was elevated by a man lying off-camera between the camera and host's desk, such that it would appear at the bottom of the frame in the foreground, with the puppet's 'face' facing away from the camera.

The show's participants would frequently make jokes about how hideous Dickie's face was, the joke being that the audience never saw it and were kept out of the loop. In the late 1990s, the 'face' of the puppet was finally shown on camera - an MC Escher-esque photocopy of a person, mounted on the end of the stick.

[edit] Behaviour

At first, every time he made his comment or joke, a whip sound effect was used, and he would immediately retreat from the desk. Daryl Somers gave the signal when to pull him back down if the puppeteer hadn't already done so. Dickie specialised in popping up to terrify unexpecting overseas guests, who clearly had no idea what he was supposed to be. In the late 90s with mounting controversy regarding the possibly genital implications of his name, his popularity began to wane.^{[citation needed]}

John Blackman also voiced several other oddball characters on the show, including the angel (a small angelic creature which had an unusually coarse nature and Mrs Macgillicuddy (a hideous old hag).