Tales from Fat Tulip’s Garden

1 9 8 5 – 1 9 8 7 (UK)
28 x 10 minute episodes

Created by drama school chums Tony Robinson and Debbie Gates, Tales from Fat Tulip’s Garden was a bizarre children’s show featuring Robinson jumping around a garden while explaining in an excited and animated manner – direct to camera and in great detail – the strange things that went on above the grass.

He played every character in his semi-improvised stories, using just his voice, his body, and anything he found lying about in the garden, allowing viewers to interpret the characters in their own minds’ eye.

Characters included a posh-talking ex-police dog called Dorian (who was more suited to sniffing out jam doughnuts than criminals), Wayne Newt, Thin Tim (who slept in the airing cupboard), Anwar Rabbit, Gilbert Harding Sheep, Bunting Tadpole, Farouk the Greenfly, Fred the Baddie (an imp who communicated through the medium of old kippers and stink bombs), Norman the Shrew, Costello the Sparrow, Lewis Collins (the deluded stunt tortoise who believed he could leap over Fat Tulip’s house), Tracy Bee, Ernie and Sylv (the resident pond-dwelling frogs) and, of course, Fat Tulip.

Fat Tulip wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer and was certainly not prone to making good decisions, but his heart was in the right place.  His portly frame was no surprise given that his favourite sandwich contained chocolate spread, peanut butter, jam, cold potato and a fried egg.

The second series took the characters out of the garden and into places such as a local swimming pool (Filmed at Leyton baths) and even a seaside holiday for Fat Tulip and dimwitted Police Inspector Challenor.

The series was filmed on location at a house called Little Monkhams in Woodford, Essex, and in a section of Epping Forest adjacent to the house, called Knighton Wood.

Unfortunately, Little Monkhams was destroyed in a suspicious fire in 2007.