Talk:Flower Pot Men

Removed drug references

The show was also accused of teaching childred drug related vocabulary such as "weed" and the flower"pot" men
70.172.198.81 if this comment is true please provide references for it, thank you. Roaming27 06:31, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

New Version

In my humble opinion the new version is rubbish and the older version was not lacking because of a simple plot or absence of colour. The older version did not impede my grasp of the English Language. Miamomimi 17:16, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

Nor me...I became an English teacher and also wrote about the joke below.

Flower Pot Men Joke

I absolutely loved this show when I was a child in England in the 1950's. Now a pensioner in Australia, I also love the joke that came from it so many years later....

Bill and Ben are in bed together, Bill says, "Hupple-up" and Ben says, "If you loved me, you'd swallow that."

How times change. ;-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 116.240.240.130 (talk) 08:40, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Uddo Shlogalog

I'm sure I once saw a clip of the old series with Bill and Ben greeting a tortoise called Shlogalog (Slowcoach)?

Can anyone confirm that they had a tortoise friend?

And Introducing... A Leg (talk) 15:16, 2 June 2009 (UTC)

Never mind: found the confirmation myself and added a mention. And Introducing... A Leg (talk) 20:03, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

...

"Originally, the programme was part of a BBC children's television series titled Watch with Mother, with a different programme each weekday, and all involving string puppets"

Utter nonsense!

Rag, Tag and Bobtail were glove puppets; and Picture Book was someone reading from a book who occasionally showed the illustrations from the book to camera. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.110.92.237 (talk) 07:12, 21 April 2010 (UTC)

Flobalob

I've removed the following text: However, the popular notion that they ever said "Flobbalob" or "Flobbadob" is an urban myth; if one listened carefully to their banter, one could hear words like "Loblob" ("lovely") and "Flobberpop" ("flowerpot"), either of which could have given rise to the urban myth.

Flobalob and Flobadob can be distinctly heard in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOv2cUv4gcU and http://www.toonhound.com/flowerpot.htm respectively.JohnHarris (talk) 16:43, 21 July 2012 (UTC)

I agree. Flobadob was never used in the original series. It was invented later and perpetuated by Jasper Carrot in one of his sketches in the 1980s. Bkesselman (talk) 06:49, 27 June 2020 (UTC)

Flobalob

Listened to that clip, couldn't hear it distinctly or otherwise, sorry. Inserted brief reference to the point being controversial. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bookseeker (talk • contribs) 10:22, 5 January 2015 (UTC)

One of the two BFI sources we're already citing attests to it, though they spell it peculiarly. So I inserted it with a citation. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:43, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Copying of this article, not copyvio

A passage in the article added in this edit was uncited and looked suspiciously well written to me, but it turned out the page that also has it—British Classic Comedy—is dated 12 years after Jmcc150's edit. Sincerest form of flattery and all that. Yngvadottir (talk) 16:43, 12 May 2018 (UTC)

Reboot?

What is the point of this word? Is it perhaps 'new version' in computer-speak? Reboot merely means to start again. The new series is not the same show.

Previous edit added by IP editor CapnZapp (talk) 09:51, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Our article on Reboot (fiction) should answer all your questions:

In serial fiction, the term "reboot" signifies a new start to an established fictional universe, work, or series. A reboot discards continuity to re-create its characters, plotlines and backstory from the beginning.[1][2] It has been described as a way to "rebrand"[3] or "restart an entertainment universe that has already been established".[1]

Another definition of a reboot is a remake which is part of an established film series or other media franchise.[4] The term has been criticised for being a vague and "confusing"[5] "buzzword",[6] and a neologism for remake,[7][8] a concept which has been losing popularity since the 2010s.[9][10]

Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 09:53, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Brabban claim

I've added some refs about the Brabban claim, and removed the following from the end of the article:

Hilda Brabban based the characters on the antics of her two little brothers, Bill and Ben Wright, at their West Riding home in Castleford. She had been invited to appear on ITV's talk show 'Barrymore' to talk about the show but was in fact prevented by an injunction obtained by solicitors acting for former BBC Children's head and official creator Freda Lingstrom, who held the intellectual propertyrights. Miss Lingstrom claimed that she had devised the TV programme. Hilda, for her part, was recovering from a stroke at the time. A retired schoolmistress, she died in 2002, aged 88. A report about the legal action appeared in the Yorkshire Evening Post on Saturday, 13 May 2017.

The previous unsigned comment was written by User:Tacyarg. CapnZapp (talk) 11:36, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

If we had an article on Hilda Brabban's unrelated Bill and Ben characters, I would have added a hatnote to distinguish the two. As it is, I find it would be distinctly unhelpful if this article does not even mention Hlda Brabban, so I'll include a short explanatory paragraph distinguishing between the two unrelated properties. CapnZapp (talk) 11:40, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

Tend to agree, although not sure if the section deserves the title "Controversy". Martinevans123 (talk) 12:10, 9 February 2021 (UTC)

At first I vacillated between "Controversy" and merely "Confusion", leaning away from the latter since I don't see many sections with that title. When I read up on the whole subject, including the legal pressure, I felt more confident "Controversy" is, perhaps not perfect, but at least not undeserved. I remain open to other ideas on how to present the material. CapnZapp (talk) 12:07, 10 February 2021 (UTC)

When reading up on the existing referenced sources, it's remarkable how confusing this story really is.

The scatological story has long been dismissed by the family of Ms Lingstrom, which insists she knew nothing of the original tales when she developed The Flowerpot Men. Yet Lingstrom produced Listen with Mother, which featured Brabban's Bill and Ben! (The Bill and Ben of Listen with Mother aired in 1951. The Flower Pot Men's Bill and Ben of Watch with Mother was first aired at 3.45pm on Thursday 12 December 1952). CapnZapp (talk) 09:40, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

I amended our statement to exclude the names, since it would come off as very rich for us to propagate a claim the names were unknown to Lingstrom. We still can and do claim the characters are otherwise unrelated (which I guess a simple look in the BBCs archives would confirm). CapnZapp (talk) 10:05, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

It would be interesting to unearth the rebuttal spoken of here QI#Flobbadob (assuming it was published) to see exactly what it corrects. Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 10:27, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Brabban claim 2

Actually the more I think about it the more spurious the "it's a coincidence" claim becomes. (Specifically: Apart from the two names, claimed Lingstrom's estate, the connections with the Flowerpot Men end.) The argument "there's no similarities" loses a lot of power when we consider we're comparing a radio show with a television show - of course there are no visual attributes to compare!

Obviously we should follow our sources, but I feel less and less confident this is an open-and-shut case. Maybe we should phrase things as conservatively as possibly, not giving off any more confidence than what our sources tell us? Since there doesn't appear to be a single source that actually have investigated the BBC archives, we should not be compelled to report a strong case either way.

Thoughts? CapnZapp (talk) 10:34, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Tend to agree. Lingstrom is perhaps the strongest link between Listen with Mother and Watch with Mother. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:43, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Chronology

According to the article, the second series of Bill and Ben started to be broadcast before the first series had finished. That can't be right, surely?  Dr Greg  talk  15:57, 15 January 2022 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I've now worked out what was going on and have added an explanation at the start of Bill and Ben (TV series)#Episodes.  Dr Greg  talk  20:12, 2 December 2023 (UTC)