25 years and still appealing
“ARE you thinking what I’m thinking, B1?”
“I think I am, B2.”
Bananas in Pyjamas have turned 25!
And to celebrate, actors Ken Radley and Nick Opoloski – the original B1 and B2 – are lifting the lid on life inside the banana.
Radley and Opoloski spent 10 years – 300 episodes – making kids smile as bananas beloved by mothers across the globe for their ability to entertain a toddler, if only for five minutes.
And to this day, both cite the show as the highlight of their careers, despite each collecting an impressive list of credits. Opoloski is best known as Evan Hancock from Neighbours, while Radley has just wrapped Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, starring opposite Johnny Depp.
“We didn’t approach it as a classic drama but we certainly gave it as much attention as we could,” said Opoloski, 54.
“Ken and I would often be there in the corner rehearsing. We had to learn the lines perfectly because once you were in the costume you couldn’t see.”
Bananas in Pyjamas first hit screens in 1992, dreamed up by serious playwright Simon Hopkinson, who was “desperate” enough to accept a gig writing a kids’ show based on a Play School song.
And in the process he created an icon.
Bananas in Pyjamas has been syndicated across the globe, dubbed into different languages, turned into a live show and reimagined as an animation. And a quarter of a century later, it’s still on air.
“What was radical about the show was that it wasn’t educational at all. Most children’s shows have some educational value about teaching numbers or letters but this was just about fun,” Hopkinson said.
B1 and B2 were deliberately created to never be able to count above the number four to help kids struggling with learning feel accepted. “I remembered when my son Chris was four or five he was having real difficulty with reading and numbers, so I thought even though the bananas can’t read or write, we wouldn’t make it a problem. We made it so when the bananas get stuck on a number or forget it’s hilariously funny,” Hopkinson said.
Do they refer to each other as B1 or B2 outside the show? “We always left the suit and the characters at the ABC,” Opoloski said.