Come Outside

***Come Outside*** is a British educational children's television series that ran from 23 September 1993 to 18 March 1997 and was repeated on CBeebies until come back in-2012.[1]
 The series aims to encourage young children to learn about the world
around them. The starting point for each programme is something with
which children are already familiar, such as water, wood, paper, boots,
spiders, buses, soap, street lamps. The two main characters are Auntie
Mabel (played by Lynda Baron of *Open All Hours* and the sequel "Still Open All Hours"),
 and her dog Pippin. Pippin was initially played by a female dog called
Pippin, but the role was later inherited by this dog's grandson, Mr. Higgins. They go on adventures in Auntie Mabel's aeroplane, travelling
far and wide across the UK to find out more. Music, rhymes and stories enrich the programme topics.

The episode entitled *Bricks* won the Royal Television Society Educational Television Award 1997 in the Pre-school and Infants category.

This was the main theme at the beginning of every episode:
*Look up, look down, look all around*
*Up in the air or on the ground*
*Come for a walk, come for a ride*
*There's so much to see so Come Outside*

## Overview

The "adventures" are generally concerned with showing how something
is made, or how everyday objects and systems work including flowers
growing and objects getting made.

## Episodes

Main article: List of Come Outside episodes

### Transmissions

 **2** | 22 September 1994
 **3** | 7 January 1997

## Locations

**Series 1** *Programmes 1 – 11* a cottage on the corner of Denham Airfield
 in Buckinghamshire was used to provide the exterior shots of Auntie
Mabel's house. She would come out of the house, walk through the back
garden and on to the airfield to climb into her aeroplane. The interiors
 were shot at Capital Studios in Wandsworth, South West London.

**Series 2** *Programmes 12 – 30* was to be shot entirely on
location, including the interiors of Auntie Mabel's house. The cottage
at Denham Airfield was occupied and so a new location had to be found.
An empty cottage on some farmland in Harefield, Middlesex was rented. In
 the original transmission schedule Programme 30 (based in Harefield)
was to be followed by a repeat of Programme 1 (based in Denham) and so a
 programme about moving house was shot to link the two locations.

**Series 3** *Programmes 31 – 40* was commissioned two years later and was also shot at the cottage in Harefield.

In every programme Auntie Mabel ventures outside and this involved
shooting in many locations in the United Kingdom, such as a pencil
factory in Keswick, the manufacture of Wellington boots in Dumfries, a
pottery in Stoke, growing bulbs in Spalding, Lincolnshire and making
brushes in Portsmouth.

Sometimes Auntie Mabel's adventures stayed closer to home. Some of
the episodes were filmed in the Middlesex area, for example in the
episode "Buses" Auntie Mabel boards a bus bound for Uxbridge and is
later seen exiting the public library at Ruislip Manor. Scenes were also
 shot in Woodley, in the precinct and in the veterinary clinic.

In the episode "Marmalade" Auntie Mabel flies to Seville to visit an
orange grove. Shooting was restricted to the one day on which the
oranges were ready for harvesting. This was only known with very short
notice and consequently arrangements to fly out were made at the last
minute. It happened well outside the main production period by which
time Lynda Baron was committed to other work and was not free to travel
to Seville. To make it appear that Auntie Mabel had visited the orange
grove, she was recorded in the studio against a Chroma key background
while a body double was used for reverse angle shots of her in Spain.

## Flying sequences

A feature of *Come Outside* is Auntie Mabel's unusual mode of
transport. She flies a small plane, often referred to as 'Spotty Plane'
because of its big red, blue, green and purple spots. Lynda Baron is
shown as Auntie Mabel climbing in and out of the cockpit and sitting at
the controls, usually with Pippin at her side. The actual flying was
done by John O'Hara (Series 1) and aerobatics pilot Alan Cassidy (Series
 2 and 3). They dressed in Auntie Mabel's coat and old-fashioned flying
hat complete with red wig, and operated a puppet version of Pippin
sitting by their side. The parts where Auntie Mabel is sitting with
Pippin showing her subjects down below while up in her spotty transport
is actually filmed still on land and the real Auntie Mabel and Pippin
are acting those parts as well.

Three different Slingsby Firefly planes were used in the series. The first was G-RAFG, based at Denham Airfield.
 The flying sequences for Series 2 and 3 were shot with Slingsbys G-BOCM
 and G-SFTZ based at White Waltham Airfield. One of these has a
different propeller from the first plane, with black stripes which made a
 whirling spiral effect when spinning.

Aerial views of the various locations visited by Auntie Mabel were shot by Jeremy Braben.

## Characters

* **Auntie Mabel** – the main human character of the show. She

lives with her dog, Pippin. In some episodes a close up of Auntie
Mabel's hand can be seen, revealing a wedding ring. Auntie Mabel never
talks of her "elusive" husband, but rather about her sister Edie. Played
 by Lynda Baron.

* **Pippin** – Auntie Mabel's pet dog. Pippin often has a comedy

sub-plot during each episode, where she gets up to mischief without
Auntie Mabel knowing. For example, in the episode "A carton drink", she
secretly eats the sausages from her lunch box. In the episode "Soap",
she hides the bar of soap to avoid having a bath.  and the episode "A Woolly Jumper" ends with Pippin finding a jumper knitted by Auntie Mabel. and then pulling on it and causing it to unravel. Played by Pippin and Mr. Higgins. Played by Pippin and Mr. Higgins.

* **Edie Featherstone** – Auntie Mabel's sister, who is often referred to but never seen on screen. However, her voice was heard in the episode "A Woolly Jumper".

## Animals

Pippin was a mixed breed dog, half Tibetan Terrier, half Bearded Collie, roughly third generation descended from the famous American acting dog Benji
 and was owned and trained by the award-winning animal trainer Ann Head.
 Pippin was quite old at the start of the first series in 1993 and so
she performed the slower but complex moves while her grandson, Mr.
Higgins, performed any physically demanding actions. Pippin retired at
the end of Series 1 and Mr. Higgins took over the role of 'Pippin'
entirely for Series 2 and 3. The only time a puppet was used was in the
flying sequences when the plane was actually in the air. At all other
times the real dog was used. Mr. Higgins also starred as the Bakers dog
for Bakers Complete pet food commercials and is still pictured on the
products. He died in 2008.

Many other animals took part in *Come Outside*. Specially-shot
footage included snails from London Zoo, exotic frogs at Chester Zoo,
geese at Folly Farm in Gloucestershire, rabbits at Tilgate Park in West
Sussex, butterflies in the Butterfly Centre, Eastbourne, hedgehogs
supplied by St. Tiggywinkles Animal Hospital and spiders from a private
collection. In addition archive shots were provided by the BBC's Natural
 History Film Library in Bristol.

## Production details

Elizabeth Bennett created the format and characters, wrote the
scripts, directed many of the programmes and produced all three series.

Two different production companies were involved. Series 1 was made
by Spelthorne Productions which has since closed. Series 2 and 3 were
made by Elizabeth Bennett's production company Tricorn Associates.

## Repeats

Come Outside has been shown on "Daytime on Two" strand from 1993 to 1997 on BBC2 with repeats until the mid-2000s and then moving into the CBeebies slot. CBBC on Choice premiered Come Outside on Monday 9th May - Friday 9th June 2000 at 4.25pm. Come Outside returned on Monday 4th September 2000 - Friday 20th October 2000 before Gremlyn TV. and was broadcast one more time on Easter Monday - Friday 26th May 2001 as part of the provisional secondary programming block, Nature's on the Case. It has been repeated on CBeebies until 2012. It will be back in 2027