Playdays

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Playdays (known as Playbus until 25 December 1989) was a children's television programme from the United Kingdom. It was broadcast between 17 October 1988 and 28 March 1997 on the BBC. The show was the successor of Play School, and, like its predecessor, was designed as an educational programme.

Contents 1 Characters and Plot 2 Story 3 Trivia 4 External Links

[edit] Characters and Plot

The main characters of Playdays were puppets known as Why Bird (voiced by Ellie Darville), Peggy Patch (Sally Preisig) and Poppy (Sue Monroe). There were also a number of human presenters including Zoë Ball and Trish Cooke. The show would begin with the Playdays bus driving along to the tune of the theme song until it reached the bus stop. The bus stopped at a different place each day (originally the Why Bird Stop on Monday, the Playground Stop on Tuesday, the Dot Stop on Wednesday, the Patch Stop on Thursday and the Tent Stop on Friday.)

[edit] Story

Each week, the characters would take part in different activities or go to a different place. At the Roundabout Stop stories and nursery rhymes were told, at the Why Bird Stop educational video clips were shown on the 'Wye Tech Computer', the Poppy Stop featured Poppy's house where she would do everyday things from cooking simple meals to building toy castles and towers, Peggy Patch would visit different areas of Britain, and the Dot Stop featured Rebecca Higgins as Dot telling a story.

[edit] Trivia

• In 1989, the BBC insisted that the independent production company which made Playbus (Felgate Productions) change the programme's name after they had received a complaint from the National Playbus Association.
• The Dot Stop was replaced with the Roundabout Stop in 1992, and the Tent Stop was replaced with the Poppy Stop in 1995.

[edit] External Links

• Playdays Cast on IMDb: [1]
• Playdays Online Petition: [2]
• Playdays titles and theme tune: [3]