Podge and Rodge
Podge and Rodge are the two characters from A Scare at Bedtime, an Irish adult comedy televised puppet show. The characters were created and are produced by Mick O'Hara and Ronan McCabe.
Podge originally appeared on The Den, as a decidedly evil little character. At first, he was introduced as nothing more than a puppet Zag (of Zig and Zag) had found in a box amongst the rubbish behind a magic shop, and used him to practise ventriloquism, eventually performing a few dire shorts that showcased Zag's lack of skill. Zig was particularly jealous of the attention Podge was receiving.
Things took a sinister turn, however, when one day, during one of these shorts, a mysterious voice insulted Zag. With the pieces in place for the revelation, Podge made himself fully known to the audience – alone with Zig at the conclusion of the broadcasting day, he moved and spoke on his own, bullying Zig, telling him he would be his friend if he stole the bike presently being offered as a competition prize. Zag and presenter Ray D'Arcy remaining oblivious to this as Podge would occasionally move in the background or be seen scheming on his own, and letters and pictures would pour in from the viewing children trying to let them know that Podge was evil. Eventually, after Zig finally spilled the beans, Podge made a power play and took over the programme for a day, revealing that he had been brought to life by a magician, but then sealed away when he turned evil. Podge also possessed some magical powers of his own that he'd learned from the magician, and turned one of the crew members into a teapot. He was finally dealt with when the magician arrived at the end of the programming day, hypnotised Podge, and took him away.
Not that that stopped him.
Podge would continue to reappear in disguise – be it as a postman, a leprechaun, a trick-or-treater, a health inspector or a taxi-driver, and once, he locked Dustin the Turkey, with whom she shared a history of physical violence, in the cupboard under the stairs and attempted to take his place by means of disguising himself with a few feathers and a coffee cup for a beak. His most daring schemes would come around the holidays – in his first Christmas-ruining scheme, he tried to ensure that Zig would receive no presents from Santa Claus, using his postman disguise to enter their home, break one of the presents, for which Zig would be blamed, and also make off with a bottle of Scent of Man, a cologne which he would develop a great fondness for, which would often give away his identity. Zig was able to prove his innocence, but Podge was still intent on ruining Christmas, taking the gang's Christmas letters and not delivering them to Santa. When the Den crew set out to do the job themselves, Podge kidnapped Kris Kringle and took his place, only to be thankfully thwarted in a scuffle with Ray.
Eventually, after the departure of Zig and Zag from the show, Podge was finally well and truly caught by the Den gang, only to be freed by his never-before-seen twin brother, Rodge, posing as a policeman, who escorted him away. The Dastardly Duo continued to make trouble for the gang, mostly on the holidays, often seeking to eat Zuppy – Podge had the little creature to blame for being caught out in several of his schemes before, and seemed to have developed a taste for dog. Rodge's precise origins were never gone into (Podge's introduction, after all, happened many years before Rodge first appeared, and since young children were the target audience, and none of them would have been around for Podge's origin, it didn't really matter), but it did appear that he possessed some magic powers like Podge, as the duo were capable of vanishing into thin air. They had particular contempt for Echo Island, especially the version broadcast in Irish.
The duo's increasingly regular use of profane language and sexual innuendo made them unsuitable for a children's television show (one particular line I remember took place at approx. 4 p.m- the utterance of "Dustin smells like shit",which Dustin covered quickly with "I'm not wearing a hat!"), so, they were moved to a close to midnight slot, in the programme, A Scare at Bedtime. This show took its name from a previous RTE show called A Prayer at Bedtime, which overlaid the text of a Roman Catholic prayer over serene images with choral music playing. A Scare at Bedtime is close to being the polar opposite of this, with extremely adult content, lewd jokes and slightly obscene anecdotes being related by the two puppets. Their origins on the Den are largely ignored, as the backstory gradually established on A Scare at Bedtime, presents them to be both over 60 years old (although they don't look any different than they used to), and to have been living in Ballydung Manor, a converted insane asylum, for most of that time, with a lunatic nurse that they call "Granny."
There was a companion website for a time (ballydung.com), which is long since defunct.
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Categories: Irish television programmes