View from the sofa: I’m not dreaming – that really is Motson reporting a winning goal at Pupton Park
Footy Pups, CBeebies
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Your support makes all the difference.It was around 4.10pm on the edge of the sofa when the flu drugs began to take hold. I remember hearing something like “Madison’s taken a tumble,” shouted by what sounded like John Motson. I shook myself from my semi-conscious state. What was this? A crash in a chaotic track bike race? Had Madison Keys, the American tennis player, gone and done a Sharapova? And what was the veteran football commentator doing telling me all about it?
It turned out that it was in fact Motson saying those words and it was about a girl called Madison. A girl of around five called Madison, to be precise. I had come dangerously close to nodding off in front of CBeebies with the kids and Footy Pups was part way through.
And the incongruity slowly dawned on me: there I was with my two kids watching a show about keeping active – hosted by the England and Arsenal striker Rachel Yankey, being impossibly upbeat – and there we were slumped in front of the television.
And it made me wonder: do shows about activity actually get kids out moving? Does Tree Fu Tom coax children out of their chairs and get them to do his weird quasi-martial arts? How about Sportacus, that freakishly muscly bloke in Lazytown, and his attempts go get kids eating fruit by calling it “sports candy”?
Whether Footy Pups contributes to the solution for the obesity crisis or not, the rest of the show was entertaining enough and it kept my kids stuck to the sofa – so it had fulfilled at least one of the prerequisites for a children’s show. The episode in question was concerned with agility, which Yankey explained was all about speed, balance and movement.
It included a cartoon sequence of a match between the Footy Pups and Potamus Hotspur (made up entirely of hippos, predictably enough) where the visitors to Pupton Park (no comment) kept indulging themselves in an extremely muddy centre circle. Well, they were hippopotamuses.
The winning goal for the Footy Pups came about after one of the players used their agility to get out of the mud and past the goalkeeper to score. And it was expertly – if a little surreally – commentated on by Motson.
“That’s it, there’s the winner!” he shouted as if it was Harry Kane scoring the decisive goal in the Euro 2016 final.
Yankey and the children she was coaching then took part in activities such as balancing on one foot, shifting from side to side and running about in a room where their opponents tried to grab ribbons off the backs of their shirts. There was a ball involved as well, along with copious words of encouragement.
It was all very informative and no doubt ticked at least three “public service” boxes for the BBC – but had it got through to the children?
I asked my eldest whether she’d watch it again. With typical six-year-old contrariness she shouted indignantly, “No,” before adding: “Umm, maybe.” It was only then that I noticed she was standing on one foot. CBeebies, you may be on to a winner.
Meanwhile I also learned something. Lemsip and medicine for dry coughs make for odd daydreams.
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