Well it's come to this. Mr Squiggle is gone.

Norman Hetherington was born in NSW in 1921. He served with the First Australian Army Entertainment Unit during the Second World War. After a career as a cartoonist for The Bulletin, Hetherington began performing puppetry for television from its inception in Australia. He created children's shows Nicky and Noodle for the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) in 1956 and Jolly Gene and His Fun Machine for Channel Seven in 1957.

In 1959 he cam up with a moon dwelling character with a pencil for a nose for a five minute segment in Children's TV Club, and such was the success that Mr Squiggle was given his own show later that year. Squiggle worked his way through numerous female assistants, with the last one Rebecca being Hetherington's daughter. The final Mr Squiggle show aired in 1999, back at the original five minute duration but now used as filler.

In 1990 he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal "for service to children's television programmes and puppetry" and in 2006 he received the Jim Russell Award from the Australian Cartoonists' Association. This last was particularly fitting as Mr Squiggle encouraged children to draw for 40 years.

He is survived by Margaret and his children, Rebecca and Stephen.

I used to love watching Mr Squiggle as a tiny tacker.  That, plus Seseme Street, The Wombles, The Magic Roundabout and Captain Pugwash were early childhood favourites.

Mr Squiggle was quite an inventive show with the upside down drawings capturing my early imagination.  I have no idea how it was done though - I assume Mr. Hetherington had another video monitor nearby while doing it? 

Either way it was an entertaining children's show which fulfilled its brief very well.  I'd put Simon Towsend's Wonder World as another children's show which was well done as well.

They - as people love saying - sure don't make them like they used to...

I recall a description of the method, possibly from his appearance on Australian Story. Kids would send in "squiggles" on envelopes. Hetherington would transfer the doodle to a pad and work out what he could turn it into. The upside down squiggle would be drawn on a prop canvass and the complete drawing would be transferred onto a duplicate canvass.

The puppet incorporated an L shaped pencil, which Hetherington would use to trace the duplicate completed upside down squiggle in the flys, over the set. And then, Upside down Miss Jane. Or for some diversity, occasionally sideways.

Ok, that's interesting to know.  That always got me thinking how they did that - which is a good thing for a youngster to be like.  Most children's shows should entertain but make them question certain things - much like The Curiosity Show - another of my favourites.

Speaking of which, I've just read that the old British children's show Rentaghost is to be made into a film starring Russell Brand.

I'm not sure if that's a good thing or not...but if Hollywood are going down that route then I await the film version of Supergran and Danger Mouse with eagerness!

There really are no new ideas. Write a childrens book, in a couple of decades it'll be a feature film.  Still, I'm happy Phillip K Dick's day has come, and Riverworld fits the current television take on "mystery".

Or in other words, roll on The Red and the Blue film.