Jigsaw (not to be confused with the 1965 quiz show and the 2017 horror movie of the same name) was a children's television series that aired on the BBC from 1979-1984, over a span of six seasons. This show was made to teach children basic reading and writing skills by using puzzle solving and entertainment. The show was primarily written and produced by a man named Clive Doig.
The main reason why people remember this show is thanks to a character, Introduced in Seasons 2, named Mr. Noseybonk (played and created by mime artist Adrian Hedley), who wears an unnerving white mask and suit. This character was known to simultaneously amuse and terrify the target demographic of four to seven year old children.
Jigsaw has a total of fifty known episodes, with a majority being considered either lost or partially found due to clips occasionally resurfacing,
The Series/Production/Information[]
On July 16, 1979,At 4:45 PM the first episode of “Jigsaw,” a television show aimed at children aged between 4 and 7,Was aired on BBC One,The programme, as previously mentioned, was written and directed by Clive Doig,One of the directors of the Vision on show,A show created by Ursula Eason and Patrick Dowling,which it had ended three years before the publication of jigsaw.
the show was hosted by mime artist Adrian Hedley, Janet Ellis and "Jigg",A talking orange puzzle piece(voiced by John Leeson later replaced by Tommy Boyd then Howard Stableford.),The cast in thefirst series also featured Pterry, a pterodactyl, Biggum the giant,and Cid Sleuth (played by David Cleveland,Which had appeared in vision on as the prof)
Adrian as young man he loved watching Vision On,he were originally trained as actor at the Webber Douglas Academy of Dramatic Art,Adrian's mentor was Ben Benison,One of the original actors of vision on. Adrian had gotten the job on jigsaw right after Lucky Numbers,This was also the first occasion where Adrian appeared on TV,Clive who at the time had produced Lucky Numbers,He decided to choose it for jigsaw,In the second season of the show,Adrian created and plays the character Noseybonk,As mentioned before, the character was disturbing, however according to Adrian,He was surprised to see people scared and that he hadn't created it to be scary,He claims that the inspiration for the character came from a festival in Basel, Switzerland,He had seen a mask similar to Noseybonk's in a shop window, and that's where the inspiration for the character came from.
In Season 2 the cast also added Wilf Lunn and Sylvester McCoy,(Which had already appeared in vision on)McCoy He reappeared as one of the O-men,Hector The Hedgehog and dot,Introduced in season four,Dot replaced Janet for the last two seasons, after she left to become the host of Blue Peter,Among the actors included were also Paul Clayton,Who acted as host for some episodes,Tommy Boyd and Howard Stableford.
The theme music for 'Jigsaw' was composed by Martin Cook and Richard Denton (also responsible for the theme for Tomorrow's World) using a mixture of electronic keyboards and musique concrète. Cook would later compose a revised theme on his own.They were also used children Carnival(Composed by Alan feanch and Ted Atking)kindly leave the stage(Composed by Johnny pearson,Used for the Cid Sleuth segments)A Hippo called hubert(Composed by Joe Griffiths,Used for Noseybonk segments)
The series ended in 1984,Old episodes were rerun until 1985,Despite the show's mild infamy, nearly all of the show's footage is not available online. A list of found episodes/clips can be viewed below.
Trivia[]
- The show became much more well-known when in 2006 the video appeared "Noseybonk Creepy Kids Show" appeared on YouTube ,But it wasn't before the 2008 Who achieved his success thanks to English YouTuber Stuart Ashens (known as Ashens)when he made a series of parodies of three videos ''Noseybonk Returns'' release on internet 27 March 2008,the videos titled ''Cake'', ''fridge'' and ''Jigsaw'',where show him committing evil acts, such as killing and eating people and performing satanic rituals.
- On December 16, 2008, Ashens returned to play the character in season 5 episode 5 of Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe series, in a short segment where Noseybonk stabbed a person while he was sleeping in the middle of the night,plus Charlie explain that when he saw Mr Noseybonk appear on TV, he gets scared and had nightmares about him, he also describes him as the type of person who would sneak into the house in the middle of the night and stab the person asleep in bed.
- Noseybonk's last appearance on Ashens' channel was in 2019,In a video where he reviewed the Nintendo Switch, towards the end of the video, Ashens picking up the Switch, where he could be seen through the reflection of the console wearing noseybonk the mask.
- The character of Mr Noseybonk became much more well-known in the American internet community in 2016, when the youtuber Blameitonjorge put him in the 1# place of the video "Top 20 Unintentionally Disturbing Kids' Characters From Around The World".[1]
- 2 years later, during the end of April/beginning of May 2018, a false urban legend Created by the Venezuelan youtuber DrossRotzank began to circulate on various YouTube communities (the Spanish and Italian communities)in which he saw that Noseybonk was not played by Hedley, but by an actor with an anonymous name, suffering from serious mental problems, and he started began to have an obsession with the character he played and who no longer distinguished reality from fiction, also wanting to do the segments on his own, And this led Clive to fire the actor before the start of filming of the final season,but he was allowed to keep the mask,and that years after 2008 the anonymous actor would make the Noseybonk Returns videos himself.[2]
- The show shares incredibly, many similarities with the Czechoslovakian children's show Slniečko,Both programs are from 1979,Both shows give lessons to children.
- The character of Mr Noseybonk was satirized in the "familiar" episode of The X-Files as Mr ChuckleTeeth.
- Also,Mr Noseybonk made a cameo appearance in a episode the series The Jonathan Ross Show 2016,Where the cast of stranger things was shocked,And they were told that he was watching them.
- Mr Noseybonk appeared in TV Years magazine in 2019
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- Currently only 4 full episodes have been found, while of the other 46 episodes ,only short clips have been found.
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