Fimbles

***Fimbles*** is a British children's television series created and produced by Novel Entertainment. The series has 200 episodes, airing from 2002-2009 on CBeebies and BBC2 (30 January 2012-2016 on SPTHFKids). The Fimbles are Fimbo, Florrie and Baby Pom, magical characters who all live in a bright, lush, and colourful place called Fimble Valley.

The programme has been broadcast in over 100 countries, including the US, Canada, China and all the countries in mainland Europe.

The snouted and concentrically-ringed appearance of the Fimbles was based on the eponymous villains of *Lucy Anna and the Finders*, written and illustrated by Sarah Hayes. Although Hayes is cited in the credits of *Fimbles*, and she was involved in adapting the characters for the television series, the implacably omnivorous Finders (who, throughout the book, threaten to eat Lucy Anna) have nothing else in common with the Fimbles.

The scripts of the 200 episodes were written by a number of writers, most notably the programme's producer Lucinda Whiteley. The Fimbles are cuddly, hippo-like creatures and are portrayed by "skin" actors in complex, fluffy animatronic suits and all look quite similar apart from their colour and size. Fimbo is yellow with green stripes, is the tallest and he likes to eat crumble crackers, Florrie is blue with purple stripes, a little smaller than Fimbo and is often seen carrying a Fimble-like doll called Little One, and Baby Pom is the smallest, green with pink stripes and generally follows the others like a toddler, whilst pushing Trundle Truck. Other characters, which are large scale puppets, are a blue tree frog called Rockit. a purple and green striped mole called Roly Mo, a plump pink bird called Bessie and her chick, Ribble. Originally Ribble was an almost squeaking blob of orange fur with a beak; he was given eyes in later episodes.

The three Fimbles have a special "sixth sense" - when the Tinkling Tree tinkles its bell-like blossoms, it makes the nose, fingers and topknot of one or more Fimbles twitch as they get the "Fimbling Feeling". This tells the character(s) that they are going to find something. It may be a natural phenomenon - a patch of sunlight for example, an everyday object, e.g. a tambourine, or something which would be totally inexplicable in the real world, such as a puddle of blue "goo". Whatever is found becomes the catalyst for the episode's adventures and the trigger for the Fimbles' creative play.

Roly Mo, who has a vast underground library of books, tells a story in every episode, Despite Doing the "When you take a look inside a book" song Composed by KICK Production and either Roly Mo, Fimbo or Bessie give a summary at the end of the programme as to what has happened to the Fimbles that day. Live action film of real children at play also features in every episode.

There is a spin-off to Fimbles called *The Roly Mo Show*, which is also produced by Novel Entertainment, starring Roly Mo and a cast of other characters including Roly's niece Little Bo. The Roly Mo Show concentrates on literacy and books and is made as an educational programme. Also devised by Novel Entertainment, the programme was formerly shown on the CBeebies channel. *Fimbly Songtime*, a shortened version of the programme with a song only, has also aired in the past. The programme has also erroneously been listed as *Fimbles Songtime*. The Fimbles also feature in a touring stage show for children called *Fimbles Live!*, which was devised by the playwright and author David Wood CBE.

Richard Starzak was part of the designing team in the Fimbles doing Additional Character Designs. He was also known for *Rex the Runt*, *Shaun the Sheep*, *Morph* and *Wallace and Gromit*

## Trivia

* Roly Mo has appeared on *The Weakest Link*, a former British game show, in a puppets special. He was voted off in the 5th round (he said he spent too much time reading books and needed to be watching good television programmes), but said he would still be seen as a winner by the Fimbles even though he lost because it was the taking part that mattered. Anne Robinson also asked Roly Mo how irritating the Fimbles were, and at the request of both Anne Robinson and the audience, Roly Mo and the other puppets sang the song "When you take a look inside a Book".
* In common with many children's programmes, the Fimbles very occasionally contains a subtle joke aimed at adults who are accompanying children in watching the programme. One such instance of this is where Ribble gets sticky bits of paper stuck on and around his beak. Bessie exclaims "Ribble, Ribble, your face is a mess!", a reference to the lyrics of the David Bowie song "Rebel Rebel".
* In one episode of Dead Ringers there was a parody of Cbeebies featuring 3 characters called the brightly coloured blobs that commit to drugs and suicide, they also use the same fat suits for Fimbo, Florrie and Pom but they took the fimble heads out and replaced it with large Tweenie Heads, Lucinda Whiteley and Mike Watts (The shows producers) reacted to this and they were confused on what has been changing recently way back before they did the roly mo show