Come Outside

This article is about the UK children's TV series. For the 1962 single, see Come Outside (song).

Come Outside
Genre	Children's Educational Comedy
Created by	Elizabeth Bennett
Directed by	Elizabeth Bennett Peter Rose
Starring	Lynda Baron Pippin (series 1) Mr. Higgins (as Pippin)
Composer(s)	Jonathan Cohen
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of seasons	3
No. of episodes	40 (list of episodes)
Production
Executive producer(s)	Judy Whitfield Stacey Adams Anne Brogan
Producer(s)	Elizabeth Bennett
Production location(s)	Middlesex & Buckinghamshire
Editor(s)	David Austin Jon Bignold
Camera setup	Graham Latter Lee Pulbrook Jeremy Braben
Running time	14 minutes
Production company(s)	Tricorn Productions Spelthorne Productions
Release
Original network	BBC Two CBBC CBeebies
Picture format	576i (4:3 SDTV) (broadcast in 14:9 until 2012)
Original release	23 September 1993 (1993-09-23) – 18 March 1997 (1997-03-18)
External links
Website

Come Outside is a British educational children's television series that ran from 23 September 1993 to 18 March 1997 and was repeated on CBeebies until late 2012. The series aims to encourage young children to learn about the world around them. The starting point for each programme is something with which children are already familiar, such as wood, paper, boots, spiders, buses, soap, street lamps. The two main characters are Auntie Mabel (played by Lynda Baron of Open All Hours and the sequel "Still Open All Hours"), and her dog Pippin. Pippin was initially played by a female dog called Pippin, but the role was later inherited by this dog's grandson, Mr. Higgins. They go on adventures in Auntie Mabel's aeroplane, travelling far and wide across the UK, and occasionally further afield, to find out more. Music, rhymes and stories enrich the programme topics.

The episode entitled Bricks won the Royal Television Society Educational Television Award 1997 in the Pre-school and Infants category.

This was the main theme at the beginning of every episode:

Look up, look down, look all around
Up in the air or on the ground
Come for a walk, come for a ride
There's so much to see so come outside

Overview

The "adventures" are generally concerned with showing how something is made, or how everyday objects and systems work including flowers growing and objects getting made.

Episodes

Main article: List of Come Outside episodes

Transmissions

Series	Start date	End date	Episodes
1	23 September 1993	2 December 1993	11
2	22 September 1994	9 March 1995	19
3	7 January 1997	18 March 1997	10

Locations

Series 1 Programmes 1 – 11 a cottage on the corner of Denham Airfield in Buckinghamshire was used to provide the exterior shots of Auntie Mabel's house. She would come out of the house, walk through the back garden and on to the airfield to climb into her aeroplane. The interiors were shot at Capital Studios in Wandsworth, South West London.

Series 2 Programmes 12 – 30 was to be shot entirely on location, including the interiors of Auntie Mabel's house. The cottage at Denham Airfield was occupied and so a new location had to be found. An empty cottage on some farmland in Harefield, Middlesex was rented. To allow for the change of location to be incorporated into the show's continuity, the original transmission schedule Programme 30 (based in Harefield) was to be followed by a repeat of Programme 1 (based in Denham) and so a programme about moving house was shot to link the two locations.

Series 3 Programmes 31 – 40 was commissioned two years later and was also shot at the cottage in Harefield.

In every programme Auntie Mabel ventures outside and this involved shooting in many locations in the United Kingdom, such as a pencil factory in Keswick, the manufacture of Wellington boots in Dumfries, a pottery in Stoke, growing bulbs in Spalding, Lincolnshire and making brushes in Portsmouth.

Sometimes Auntie Mabel's adventures stayed closer to home. Some of the episodes were filmed in the Middlesex area, for example in the episode "Buses" Auntie Mabel boards a bus bound for Uxbridge and is later seen exiting the public library at Ruislip Manor. Scenes were also shot in Woodley, in the precinct and in the veterinary clinic.

In the episode "Marmalade" Auntie Mabel flies to Seville to visit an orange grove. Shooting was restricted to the one day on which the oranges were ready for harvesting. This was only known with very short notice and consequently arrangements to fly out were made at the last minute. It happened well outside the main production period by which time Lynda Baron was committed to other work and was not free to travel to Seville. To make it appear that Auntie Mabel had visited the orange grove, she was recorded in the studio against a Chroma key background while a body double was used for reverse angle shots of her in Spain.

Flying sequences

A feature of Come Outside is Auntie Mabel's unusual mode of transport. She flies a small plane, often referred to as 'Spotty Plane' because of its big red, blue, green and purple spots. Lynda Baron is shown as Auntie Mabel climbing in and out of the cockpit and sitting at the controls, usually with Pippin at her side. The actual flying was done by John O'Hara (Series 1) and aerobatics pilot Alan Cassidy (Series 2 and 3). They dressed in Auntie Mabel's coat and old-fashioned flying hat complete with red wig, and operated a puppet version of Pippin sitting by their side. The parts where Auntie Mabel is sitting with Pippin showing her subjects down below while up in her spotty transport is actually filmed still on land and the real Auntie Mabel and Pippin are acting those parts as well.

Three different Slingsby Firefly planes were used in the series. The first was G-RAFG, based at Denham Airfield. The flying sequences for Series 2 and 3 were shot with Slingsbys G-BOCM and G-SFTZ based at White Waltham Airfield. One of these (G-SFTZ) has a different propeller from the first plane, with black stripes which made a whirling spiral effect when spinning. This is meant to look like an "eye" when the propeller is spinning and is designed to frighten birds away so that they keep away from the spinning blades.

Aerial views of the various locations visited by Auntie Mabel were shot by Jeremy Braben.

Characters

• Auntie Mabel – the main human character of the show. She lives with her dog, Pippin. In some episodes a close up of Auntie Mabel's hand can be seen, revealing a wedding ring. Auntie Mabel never talks of her "elusive" husband, but rather about her sister Edie. Played by Lynda Baron.
• Pippin – Auntie Mabel's pet dog. Pippin often has a comedy sub-plot during each episode, where she gets up to mischief without Auntie Mabel knowing. For example, in the episode "A carton drink", she secretly eats the sausages from her lunch box. In the episode "Soap", she hides the bar of soap to avoid having a bath. Played by Pippin and Mr. Higgins.
• Edie Featherstone – Auntie Mabel's sister, who is often referred to but never seen on screen. However, her voice was heard in the episode "A Woolly Jumper".

Animals

Pippin was a mixed breed dog, half Tibetan Terrier, half Bearded Collie, roughly third generation descended from the famous American acting dog Benji and was owned and trained by the award-winning animal trainer Ann Head. Pippin was quite old at the start of the first series in 1993 and so she performed the slower but complex moves while her grandson, Mr. Higgins, performed any physically demanding actions. Pippin retired at the end of Series 1 and Mr. Higgins took over the role of 'Pippin' entirely for Series 2 and 3. Mr. Higgins also starred as the Bakers dog for Bakers Complete pet food commercials and is still pictured on the products. He died in 2008.

Many other animals took part in Come Outside. Specially-shot footage included snails from London Zoo, exotic frogs at Chester Zoo, geese at Folly Farm in Gloucestershire, rabbits at Tilgate Park in West Sussex, butterflies in the Butterfly Centre, Eastbourne, hedgehogs supplied by St. Tiggywinkles Animal Hospital and spiders from a private collection. In addition archive shots were provided by the BBC's Natural History Film Library in Bristol.

Production details

Elizabeth Bennett created the format and characters, wrote the scripts, directed many of the programmes and produced all three series.

Two different production companies were involved. Series 1 was made by Spelthorne Productions which has since closed. Series 2 and 3 were made by Elizabeth Bennett's production company Tricorn Associates.

External links

• Come Outside at IMDb
• Come Outside at TV.com
• Come Outside at BBC Online
• Come Outside pilot Alan Cassidy's website.