Sean Lock and Lee Mack piloted spoof kids puppet show for the BBC
Sean Lock and Lee Mack voiced puppets for a failed BBC pilot the latter has revealed.
Mack showed a clip of the unaired comedy at a recent memorial for his friend, who died in 2021, he explained to Joe Wilkinson and David Earl on their Chatabix podcast.
"It was a non-broadcast pilot of me and Sean doing a puppet show, we were the voices of the puppets, and it never got commissioned" Mack recalled of the children's show spoof. "It was supposed to be a mickey take of Saturday morning puppets but it was actually for BBC Two at 10 o'clock.
"This is a long time ago. I didn't even known Sean that well at the time ... I give it everything, the full puppet voice. And then Sean just sort of stares at me ... He says: 'Is that how you're going to do it then?'
"I went: 'Yeah. So what are you going to do then?'
"'I'm going to do it in my own voice Lee. Or, as I like to call it, with dignity.'"
Regrettably, the spoof wasn't picked up for broadcast. But there was a further twist in the tale.
"It was pretty dodgy material that was written, some of the improvisations, because it was for 10 o'clock, even though it was a pastiche of those Saturday morning shows" Mack continued. "And at the end of it the [commissioning executives] said 'yeah, we don't want this, we don't want to do it.'
Incredibly, they then asked:
"'Would you and Sean be interested in being the puppets on Saturday morning television? For real?'"
"And I was like: 'Oh yeah!'" Mack remembered. "In the character of the puppet basically. 'Are you up for it Sean?'
"And Sean just went: 'Fuck off!'"