Scally The Dog
Encyclopedia
Scally The Dog was a puppet
Puppet
A puppet is an inanimate object or representational figure animated or manipulated by an entertainer, who is called a puppeteer. It is used in puppetry, a play or a presentation that is a very ancient form of theatre....

 mongrel
Mixed-breed dog
A mixed-breed dog, also known as a mutt or mongrel, is a dog whose ancestry is generally unknown and that has characteristics of two or more types of breeds. A mixed-breed may be a cross-breed dog, a random-bred dog, or a descendant of feral or pariah dog populations...

 dog character, who co-presented Children's ITV afternoons service, from January 1989 - March 1991 in the United Kingdom.

Children's ITV

Children's ITV's bosses had noticed how successful puppet characters (such as Gordon the Gopher
Gordon the Gopher
Gordon the Gopher, also known as Gordon T. Gopher, an English puppet gopher who first appeared on Children's BBC between 1985 and 1987, presenting television shows with Phillip Schofield on the interstitial or in-vision continuity programme The Broom Cupboard...

 and Edd the Duck
Edd the Duck
Edd the Duck is a popular puppet mallard. He has green hair and appeared on the CBBC interstitial or in-vision continuity programme alongside presenters Andy Crane and Andi Peters...

) had been on its rival, Children's BBC, so they decided to create their own version, which was Scally the Dog. He was operated and voiced alternately by three different puppeteers, who were: Richard Coombs
Richard Coombs
Richard Coombs is a puppeteer from England, who has worked extensively on many British television shows, feature films, commercials & music videos. In 1987 & 1988, he worked on the ITV Saturday morning children's show, Get Fresh, where he operated the puppet, Gilbert the Alien, alongside fellow...

, John Eccleston
John Eccleston
John Eccleston is a puppeteer, writer and presenter known for his work as lead puppeteer of Rygel in Farscape, Groove in The Hoobs and his many roles on British children's television alongside Don Austen...

 & Michael J. Bassett
Michael J. Bassett
Michael J. Bassett is an English screenwriter and film director. He has produced a variety of films, both for television and cinema. Bassett's first feature, the horror film Deathwatch, was set in the trenches of World War One. Bassett's most recent project, Solomon Kane had a nationwide cinema...

. Coombs was the original operator of Scally and also built the puppet of him too. However, due to him working on other TV projects at the time, he had to share the duties of doing Scally with both Eccleston & Bassett too. During his time at Children's ITV, there was also a short-lived Scally cartoon strip in the children's TV magazine, Look-In
Look-in
Look-in was a long running children's magazine centred around ITV's television programmes in the United Kingdom, and subtitled "The Junior TVTimes". It ran from 9 January 1971 to 12 March 1994...

as well.

Scally first appeared on Children's ITV in January 1989, alongside his first human co-presenter, Mark Granger. When the independent production company, Stonewall Productions took over producing Children's ITV in April '89, Scally was kept on and appeared alongside the new presenter, Jerry Foulkes
Jerry Foulkes
Jerry Foulkes is a former presenter of Children's ITV in the United Kingdom. He is also an ex-radio disc jockey and has successfully worked in the UK television industry for many years.-Children's ITV:...

 in the afternoons for the rest of '89. In Summer 1989, when Stonewall's Children's ITV summer mornings service launched, he appeared with new recruits, Clive Warren
Clive Warren
Clive Warren is a British radio DJ. He has worked at several broadcasters and now presents on weekdays and Sundays for Metro Radio.-Early career:...

 and Jeanne Downs
Jeanne Downs
Jeanne Downs is a former presenter of Children's ITV , which is the brand name used for the majority of children's television output on ITV in the United Kingdom...

 as well. Scally had several catchphrases that he often used on Children's ITV, one of which was: "Yes, indeedy!", which he usually said when he was happy about something. Another one was: "We're still here!", which was often said by both Foulkes & Scally during their links, referring to them still being on-air at the time.
Foulkes left Children's ITV on the 22nd December 1989, so Downs took over presenting in the afternoons on the 2nd January 1990, along with Scally. This continued until the 29th March 1991, when Stonewall lost the contract to produce Children's ITV back to Central Television (who had also done it previously from 1983 - 1989). They were both replaced by a solo Tommy Boyd
Tommy Boyd
Timothy Leslie Boyd , better known as Tommy Boyd, is a British radio and television presenter who now lives in Chichester, West Sussex.-Early career:...

 on the 1st April 1991. However, both Downs and Scally (operated & voiced by Coombs) made a return to CITV 12 years later on the 3rd January 2003, when they appeared on a special one-off programme called, CITV's 20th Birthday Bash, which was celebrating CITV's 20th birthday on that day.

After Children's ITV

According to a post by Downs on the TV Forum website in 1998, the puppet of Scally now resides at the Museum of the Moving Image
Museum of the Moving Image
The Museum of the Moving Image was a museum of the history of technology and media, including cinema and its forerunners. MOMI was opened on 15 September 1988 by Prince Charles and became an instant international hit and winning 18 awards...

 in Birmingham
Birmingham
Birmingham is a city and metropolitan borough in the West Midlands of England. It is the most populous British city outside the capital London, with a population of 1,036,900 , and lies at the heart of the West Midlands conurbation, the second most populous urban area in the United Kingdom with a...

, and is owned by someone who used to work on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 Saturday morning kids' show, Live & Kicking
Live & Kicking
Live & Kicking was a BBC Saturday morning children's magazine programme, running from 1993 to 2001. The fourth in a succession of Saturday morning shows, it was the replacement for Going Live!, and took many of its features from it, such as phone-ins, games, comedy, competitions and the showing of...

. (ref: www.knightmare.com).
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