Hector's House

"Hector's House" was a children's puppet TV show. It is best remembered in the late sixties and early seventies for its 5 minute long screenings on BBC1 at 5.40 p.m. before the News. Like the more famous "The Magic Roundabout" it was actually a French production revoiced for the English market. A gentle, rather than subversive or outright bizarre series, it was first broadcast in 1965. Its French title was "La Maison de Toutou" and the French version was written by Georges Croses. "La Maison de Toutou" translates as "The House of the Doggie" and in the French version, ZsaZsa is known as ZouZou.

The main characters, affable Hector the Dog and cute Zsazsa the Cat, live in a house and beautiful garden. Kiki the Frog, dressed in a pink smock, is a constant and at times an intrusive visitor, through her hole in the wall. Despite Hector's willingness to endlessly help them out, Kiki and Zsazsa often played tricks on him to teach him a lesson, leading him to say his catchphrase at the end of the episode, "I'm a Great Big (whatever he was) Old Hector".

Hector's voice was performed by Paul Bacon, who died in 1995. The voice of Kiki was by Denise Bryer, more famous for her roles in Noddy, Terrahawks and Labyrinth. At least 50 episodes were made, each of 5 minutes duration. A DVD featuring some of these episodes is available.

It was produced by Europe Images SA and Tellytales Enterprises.

Characters from the show appeared alongside various other puppet characters in an episode of "The Goodies", in which the puppets take over the running of Great Britain as a puppet government.

External links

* [http://www.davethewave.co.uk/hector/index.htm Dave the Wave]