Help wanted to mark 25th anniversary of ZZZap!
What was your favourite TV programme as a child? Tales of the Riverbank? The Magic Roundabout?
For a generation growing up in the 1990s – and their parents – it was ZZZap!
The crazy show was both funny and educational with a host of memorable characters such as Cuthbert Lilly, Smart Arty, The Handymen and Daisy Dares You.
The concept was a simple one: ZZZap! was an 18ft-high comic book and in each show different windows from the comic would come alive with characters having their adventures.
The comedy was visual – there was no dialogue in any of the shows – making it ideal for younger children or those with hearing difficulties to enjoy.
The series ran from 1993 to 2001 and it was filmed here in Maidstone at the TV studios at Vinters Park by The Media Merchants for Meridian Broadcasting.
It starred Neil Buchanan as Smart Arty (who also presented Art Attack), Richard Waites, Sarah Pickthall, Deborah McCallum and Claire Macaulay.
Now, online blogger Ben Morton is appealing to KM readers for help. Mr Morton, who hails from Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire, was himself a fan of ZZZap! as a child. Now he runs a YouTube channel called changethewords2.
It shows old television material transposed from his VHS collection ranging from the mid-1980s to the early 2000s, including other shows such as Sooty and Co, and Art Attack.
He has 1,900 subscribers and has had 4.4 million views worldwide.
But he wants to do something special to mark the 25th anniversary this year of the launch of ZZZap!
He said: “I’m currently gathering material and since the show was made in Maidstone, I wonder if any readers have any memorabilia or photos related to the show? Or memories of it they would like to share?”
The introduction to the first series was filmed in Chequers Shopping Centre in Maidstone (now The Mall) and showed a boy buying a copy of a comic called “ZZZap!” from a newsagent. The comic contained a ‘Free TV Zapper!’ which he then used to make the comic grow to an enormous size and come alive.
The show acquired a second run of life for three years on the CITV channel from 2006 and some of its characters went on to have further lives in other children’s programmes.
Mr Morton can be reached by email on timelordofthemanor@ gmail.com
You can view his YouTube channel on https://www.youtube. com/user/changethewords2