Roland Rat

Roland Rat (also Roland Rat Superstar) AKA Ken Isitt is a British television puppet character. He was created, operated and voiced by David Claridge, who had previously been behind the Mooncat puppet in the Children's ITV television programme Get Up and Go! and would later operate and voice "Brian the Dinosaur" on Parallel 9. Claridge, whose hands appear in Tears for Fears' video for the song "Change," named Roland after the group's co-founder Roland Orzabal.

Roland lived beneath King's Cross railway station. He had an infant brother called Reggie, and a girlfriend: Glenis the Guinea Pig. His colleagues included dour Welsh technical whizz Errol the Hamster, and over-enthusiastic self-appointed "number one ratfan" Kevin the Gerbil. Claridge actually voiced all three main characters: Roland Rat, Errol the Hamster and Kevin The Gerbil; and they often appeared on screen together. Roland Rat's car 'the Ratmobile' was a bright pink 1957 Ford Anglia.

Roland Rat was introduced to ailing breakfast television network TV-am by Greg Dyke and was generally regarded as its saviour, being described as "the only rat to join a sinking ship". After a couple of months on TV-am, Roland took the audience from 100,000 to 1.8 million. One notable highlight during this period was the visit of the late Austrian racing driver Roland Ratzenberger who appeared on the show in a motor race against the Ratmobile ending with Ratzenberger's car[1] being sabotaged by his near-namesake. Between 1983 and 1985, Roland had three UK chart hit singles including "Rat Rapping" and an album The Cassette Of The Album [2]. A follow-up LP, Living Legend subsequently appeared but flopped, despite having three tracks produced by Stock Aitken Waterman. Kevin the Gerbil also had a top 50 single.

Arguably Roland Rat's golden age, was his Christmas show Roland Rat's Winter Wonderland in 1984. TV-AM sold Roland Rat advent calendars, with Roland opening each door with the viewers at 7.20am every day. The final show had Roland and his chums in the snow. The following year at Easter, Roland Rat hosted the show Roland Rat in Kowloon, Hong Kong.

In 1985 he transferred to the BBC where he had a number of shows through the late 1980s, most notably Roland Rat the Series, a chat show supposedly set in Roland's sewer home, now converted into a high-tech media centre called the Ratcave. In a similar manner to The Muppet Show and its sequels, the show would intersperse the chat show segments with a storyline involving some sort of situation "behind the scenes". He also appeared in two spoof drama series, Tales of the Rodent Sherlock Holmes, in which he played Holmes with Kevin as Dr Watson, and Ratman, a Batman spoof with Kevin as his sidekick, "Pink Bucket Man". During Christmas 1985, British Telecom operated a free "ratphone" number on 0800 800 800.

In the late 1990s he reemerged on Channel 5, in LA Rat, which featured Roland and his friends touring Los Angeles. Roland made another brief return in early 2003 as a guest presenter of CiTV.[3]

In December 2007 Roland Rat appeared on a puppet special of the Weakest Link hosted by Anne Robinson which was originally broadcast on Friday 28 December 2007 at 18:00GMT on BBC One. Roland reached the final round with Soo from The Sooty Show which went to sudden death after initially drawing with four points each. Roland ultimately lost out to Soo's superior wisdom in the tense final standoff.

The video game

In 1985 Ocean Software produced a game called Roland's Rat Race for the ZX Spectrum and Commodore 64. The player had to guide Roland through the sewers of London and collect nine pieces of a door which, when complete, would allow him to rescue his companions in time for an appearance on TV-am. Roland had to avoid enemies in the form of animated wellington boots which could be temporarily incapacitated with a squirt of glue, which could also be used to stop tube trains in order to ride on them.

External links

• Roland Rat at IMDb
• Ratfans.com Roland Rat and Friends Site - Official site