Playdays

Playdays (known as Playbus until 25 December 1989) was a British pre-school children's television program that ran from 17 October 1988 to 28 March 1997 on Children's BBC (CBBC), and was aired in reruns until 2006 (from 2002–2006, reruns were aired on CBeebies). The show was the successor of Play School and, like its predecessor, was designed as an educational programme. The creator Cynthia Felgate had been executive producer of Playschool.

After the show was dropped from CBBC on BBC1, repeats were shown on CBBC on Nickelodeon until 23 July 1999, CBBC on BBC Choice (later known as CBeebies) and CBeebies on BBC Two, until they also ended in September 2006. 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.

Characters and plot

The main characters of Playdays were puppets known as Why Bird (voiced and manipulated by Fiona Beynon Brown and latterly by Ellie Darvill), Sam Patch - later replaced by Peggy Patch (initially mute but later voiced by Sally Preisig) and Poppy, a cat (voiced by Sue Monroe). They were also accompanied by Mr Jolly (Robin Fritz, later Clive Duncan and then Andy Hockley), who would usually end each programme with a song (usually a nursery rhyme). There were also a number of human presenters including Zoë Ball, Trish Cooke and Dave Benson Phillips.