Little Head (from Clay Stool)

Clay Stool was a daytime children's TV programme which we introduced a while back (you can listen to the theme tune here).

Many readers will remember the programme's cast of toys (see above), some of which became stars in their own right: Big Ted, Hamble, Humpty and Jemima.

Many, however, have forgotten 'Little Head', who only became a regular due to a typo on the programme's props list, which was supposed to have requested 'Little Ted'. Production staff were still frantically looking for an appropriately-sized head literally minutes before the programme went out live. A quick-thinking studio manager (who some believe was telekinetically controlled by Hamble) ended the panic by decapitating one of the cameramen, who had been scheduled for ritual recycling anyway.

Producers hoped that children wouldn't notice that Little Ted had replaced Little Head in the following week's episode, but they did. Thousands wrote in demanding that Little Head be reinstated.

Little Head eventually received his own line of merchandising (including a very popular biscuit barrel). He went on to host a Saturday evening primetime show, which involved an electric current being passed through his cranium and him yelping out the names and addresses of people who, in his opinion, did not deserve welfare payments.

Possessed Birthday Cards (1978)

Bubbles, the clown who appeared in the BBC TV testcard, was very popular in the 1970s. He even had his own animated public information series and range of merchandising including toys, T-shirts, mugs, greetings cards and surgical instruments.

However, in 1978, parents became alarmed when they discovered that many of the products were possessed by the spirit of an embittered ex-TV presenter, Simon Gomorrah, who had hosted a daytime programme called 'Housewife versus Anaconda!', before it was suddenly cancelled without warning. It wasn't until several months after Gomorrah's suicide that Bubbles merchandising began displaying supernatural activity.

For example, the Bubbles birthday greetings card, as pictured above, appeared to be perfectly normal when it was sold in the shops. But, once it had been given to a child, Bubbles would transform during the night into a demonic, vulgar entity that shouted out vulgar profanities and urinated at anyone who came within shot.

Gomorrah's body was eventually exhumed and his feet were fitted with oversized, concrete-filled clown shoes so that his spirit could no longer wander the earthly plane.