From Meat Loaf, to Mr. Blobby. From one larger-than-life epic, to another…
Mr. Blobby, by Mr. Blobby (his 1st and only #1)
1 week, from 5th – 12th December 1993/ 2 weeks, from 19th December 1993 – 2nd January 1994 (3 weeks total)
It’s been a while since I’d last heard this, for obvious reasons, and I thought I’d imagined the farting synths. No, actually, they’re not farting synths. They’re fart sounds. This number one single is built around farts, of the sort seven-year-olds make by blowing into their elbow cracks.
Before we delve any further into this murky swamp, I’d better explain exactly what a Mr Blobby is, for anyone not British, or anyone born in this century. There’s no better place to start than checking the picture embedded at the head of this post. It’s a man in a giant pink and yellow rubber suit, with a perma-grin and googly eyes, who’s only capable of saying ‘blobby’, over and over again in an electronically altered voice. His schtick is that he’s terminally clumsy, and anyone who comes in contact with him will end up flat on the floor and/or with a faceful of something sticky. He rose to fame on ‘Noel’s House Party’, a Saturday evening light entertainment show, set in a fictional mansion named ‘Crinkly Bottom’…
Before we go any further, I must stress that this is a truly heinous piece of music, one that I have no interest in ever hearing again once I’ve finished writing this post. And yet… When this came out, I was that seven-year-old, for whom fart noises, and the sight of Mr. Blobby falling through a drum kit, were the height of comedy. Even now, I’m ashamed to say, the video raises a smile…
In it Mr. Blobby is bathed on a slab, in a recreation of Shakespear’s Sister’s ‘Stay’ video, and leers over his backing band in a recreation of Robert Palmer’s ‘Addicted to Love’, as well as leading a gang of children in what looks like a Satanic ritual. He is chauffeured by Jeremy Clarkson, and has Carol Vorderman as some sort of scientific advisor in his ‘Blobby Factory’. There’s an air of utter anarchy, chaos, not to mention an underlying creepiness (though maybe that’s just the Noel Edmond’s cameo…)
With a lot of the truly terrible #1s that we’ve covered, a large part of what makes them awful is that the writers and performers don’t seem to realise how bad their song is (see ‘No Charge’, or St. Winifred’s, for example). This isn’t the case with ‘Mr. Blobby’ – the creators know they’re unleashing something horrendous on the world, and show a complete lack of contrition. Quite the opposite. So while I’m not going to argue the case for ‘Mr. Blobby’ being any good, I am going to gently suggest that might be one of the few truly punk #1s.
It’s also musically quite… complex? Like the video, the song doesn’t stay with any one sound for long. The farting and the children’s chanting (Blobby, Oh Mr Blobby, Your influence will spread throughout the land…) are constantly interrupted by sudden and incongruous swerves into dance and rap, by key changes and a rising and falling tempo. I jokingly called it an ‘epic’ in my intro, but maybe I wasn’t far off… It’s hyperactive, bright, zany, stupid… It’s ADHD in musical form. Or, rather, it’s a dog whistle for seven-year-olds, who are the only ones for whom this song holds any meaning.
For me, the moment that sums it all up comes towards the end of the video, when there’s footage of Blobby storming out from a helicopter and into the arms of a child, who looks like he’s seen the face of God. It sums up Blobby mania, which culminated here, in him reaching Christmas Number One. He was everywhere: on TV, in panto, in adverts, in a 1994 computer game, even running for election as an MP in 1995 (receiving 0.2% of the vote). Three separate Mr. Blobby theme park attractions were opened over the course of the 1990s, none of which survived the decade…
The fact this made Christmas number one is a story in itself, one that I’ll go into more detail on in my next post. It was initially knocked off the top, before roaring back, and amazingly became the first record in almost twenty-five years to have two separate spells at number one (during the same chart run). This was common in the fifties and sixties, and has become a normal occurrence again in the 21st century, but throughout the entirety of the seventies and eighties no record managed the feat. In terms of returning to number one with a different song, the closest Blobby came was with ‘Christmas in Blobbyland’, which made #36 two years later. He remains active to this day, popping up on ‘Britain’s Got Talent’ just this year…
The UK Number Ones Blog 
As a 27 year old when this dropped it was truly awful. But I read an interesting article recently about Christmas number ones, specifically the endless X factor winners in the mid/late noughties, arguing that at least Blobby and Bob the Builder were memorable, if only for the wrong reasons. You can forgive seven year olds for making this number one, but not those same people for all the ‘talent’ show winners they rushed out to purchase in their teens and early twenties
Yes, as my posts and recaps have probably shown, bland is much worse than bizarre in my book… I didn’t personally contribute to Blobby’s success, and I certainly never helped an X-Factor winner to #1 (the very thought!). I am to partly blame for the Teletubbies’ big hit though… I apologise in advance…
What is X-Factor?
It’s a singing competition, like American Idol, the final of which always aired the week before Xmas, meaning the winners were pretty much guaranteed a number one single the week after… This went on for best part of a decade, 2005-2015 or so.
Ah. Gotcha. Thanks.
I never got into American Idol. I’ve never watched an episode but, have caught bits & pieces of the social media frenzy and some of the music has been good…Kelly Clarkson, Carrie Underwood, Daughtry…
1 Direction are by far the biggest thing to come from X factor…
I ….uh… well… never have I heard this. I can see why growing up with it would be a different thing. I remember HR Pufinstuf…although I caught the reruns not real time.
I have to admit…I did like the music video parodies.
And I’d never heard of HR Pufinstuf! It looks a little more wholesome than Mr Blobby’s chaotic nonsense, I have to say…
Well people thought HR Pufinstuf…was influenced by pot…which it might have been!
Yea this one was out there! It didn’t cross the ocean…and I’m kinda happy about that lol.
So, you never had the pleasure of H.R. Pufnstuf and Witchiepoo? The main kid in the show was a British kid actor.
No, not sure it ever played in the UK. Or if it did, maybe a bit before my time…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.R._Pufnstuf
This came out towards the end of my regular DJing career. Mad fool that I was, I dutifully went along to the local record shop (ahhhhh, remember the days of record shops in the high street, folks?) and bought a copy on 7″ vinyl. I played it once at a disco, I think, after being asked to do so, to a general reaction from other punters of the ‘What the f—?’ variety. Some mistakes you don’t make twice.
Haha quite. Aside from a primary school disco, I can’t see this going down at all well anywhere. Maybe good to clear the floor at the end of an evening…?
Ok. Four minutes of “WTF did I just watch?” And, a baby Blobby? Some of it was funny. The rest looks like a trip on acid.
I didn’t even notice the baby Blobby… There’s certainly a lot going on…
Dude, there is some weird shit going on in the UK. LOL!
Very odd and not exactly pretty but I guess rare! 🙂
One of my most hated chart toppers. I was not target audience being in my 30s! Just awful as was the tv show it came from. I’m quite happy to defend kiddie records if they are done well – hi Bob The Builder! – but this is just annoying. Kids records in the 60s were well constructed and often amusing. I am of the HR Pufnstuff generation though!
Ooh see, I would have classed ‘Bob the Builder’ alongside this drivel… I’ll be interested to re-appraise it when the time comes!
The kid who played the main role in HR Pufnstuf was the same actor who played the Artful Dodger in the Lionel Bart musical of Oliver
Ahhh, of course! Jack Wild – ‘Oliver’ was one of my favourite films as a child. He had a tragic life…
Never heard of this song or of Mr Blobby. I recently saw on Wikipedia this is considered one of the worst songs ever made so I had to listen. When I clicked play on the video and watched/listened, I thought after the first listen that someone had smuggled LSD into my drink and that I was high. WTH is this? And what the heck is this music video? Honestly, it’s very bad and like a fervour dream, but it’s memorable and catchy. It’s still not good.
No, it’s certainly not good. But there’s a crazy sort of fascination to it… You can’t stop watching the video.
Boy we sometimes look across the pond and wonder, what the hell was in their water?
Yes, we do like a novelty song, especially at Christmas….