Looking out of the window in my godson’s house I was amazed to see an almost life-sized Muffin the Mule staring back at me from the rear balcony of a London pub.  An incongruous sight, but it filled me with joy and reminiscence.  Alex was singularly unimpressed.  He didn’t even know who Muffin the Mule was, or that he ever played the fool.  To my surprise yesterday I read he is to be reinvented for a new generation.

Those of us who do remember probably remember him fondly as being one of the earliest children’s TV ‘characters’ which we grew to love in the black and white days before Wimbledon in COLOUR.  Listen with Mother, The Woodentops, Bill and Ben are engraved on my memory.  We had no merchandise, no pyjamas or toothbrushes, or DVD’s.  Just the occasional treat on a grainy television. I wonder if today’s characters will be…