On the fridge?

Greetings, Ghostwatchers!

First of all, a huge thank you to everybody who took part in this year's National Séance. It was such a fab night, with plenty of excellent observations, fascinating discoveries and some genuinely funny contributions along the way. There were also several things that hadn't been noticed before, which was brilliant. None of which made me remotely jealous, obviously.

Speaking of which, shortly thereafter, Arfon Jones of the fabled Behind the Curtains trinity was somehow able to spot something that nobody else appears to have spotted in approximately 34 years.

During the programme, when Kimmy takes her factual rendering of Pipes the Poltergeist and affixes it (no pin, no Blu-Tack, no bit of Sellotape) to the refrigerator, the single sheet of A4 paper is held in place by two mysterious magnets...

Even with the benefit of modern technology, pausing and enlarging the picture, the fine details on those magnets are difficult to make out. Nevertheless, our eagle-eyed Arfon dropped us a line to say he was confident they depicted Big Bird and Cookie Monster from Sesame Street.

This certainly seemed plausible. The characters, the colours and the general style of the objects all fitted rather nicely with the period in which Ghostwatch was made. I, too, was reasonably confident about Cookie Monster, but I wasn't entirely convinced that the other character was Big Bird.

And so, with a little help from Mr. Jones, we went back to the footage to investigate further.

As it turns out, I'd completely forgotten about another scene in Ghostwatch which provides a much better view of the refrigerator. It's the sequence in which Sarah Greene corrals young Suzie into helping prepare refreshments for her increasingly knackered production crew.

Pause the GHOSTWATCH: On The Night Blu-ray at approximately 43 minutes and 30 seconds and you'll get a much clearer look at our mysterious colourful figurines.

What Arfon had initially mistaken for Big Bird turned out to be, in fact, Paddington Bear, dressed in a blue raincoat, yellow hat and yellow boots, and holding an easel. A sort of miniature Bob Ross, if you will. The Cookie Monster identification, meanwhile, seems to hold up rather nicely. For the record, it was Arfon who correctly identified both.

But, wait a minute. This particular shot also reveals something that isn't first apparent elsewhere in the programme until now. The magnets swap positions.

Yes, you read that correctly.

For reasons that are entirely, totally and unequivocally paranormal, Cookie Monster and Paddington Bear appear to swap places almost exactly halfway through Ghostwatch. We don't know why. We don't know how. We don't know whether anybody on the production noticed. And, frankly, we're not entirely sure we want to find out. Could it be a continuity error, or something more sinister? Well, this is Ghostwatch, after all. So, yes, probably.

Naturally, I couldn't leave the matter there. Having identified the magnets, I did what any perfectly rationale non-crazy person would do and immediately went hunting for them on eBay. And, rather remarkably, I found them. Just a few days later, a set of three vintage Paddington Bear fridge magnets dating from 1989, manufactured by Eden Toys Inc landed on my welcome mat. A day later came Big Bird and Cookie Monster in a twin-set courtesy of Jim Henson Productions.

This ties neatly into another rather amusing aspect of Ghostwatch - when you start looking closely at what exactly constitutes the domestic decor of 41 Foxhill Drive. Quite apart from the spooky shenanigans, the Early family appear to have assembled a small collection of recognisable brands that could give a modern production's clearance department a nervous breakdown.

Take Suzie's pyjamas, for example. We have Mickey Mouse making an appearance on her nightclothes, while downstairs there's a copy of Waddingtons' Sorry! Disney Edition. An MC Hammer fold-out poster among others torn neatly from Smash Hits! magazine reside above Suzie's bed, a copy of Commodore Format below. The usual. Nothing particularly remarkable about that in an ordinary family home, of course. But it is rather lovely to see such recognisable merchandise simply existing in the background without anybody feeling the need to draw attention to it.

Kimmy also sports some branded jammies emblazoned with Forever Friends bears. For anyone who remembers the 1990s, those relentlessly cute, rounded little characters were practically everywhere. Greeting cards, stationery, cuddly toys and, apparently, even kids' bedclothes. Another tiny detail from the era, easy to overlook.

There's also a rather substantial bottle of full-fat Coca-Cola that makes an appearance or two in the Earlys' living room. Ostensibly, no elaborate product placement arrangement, or carefully negotiated brand partnership. Just a well-known bottle of fizzy pop sitting in plain view. Come to think of it, this is something of a recurring theme in BBC programming, back in the day. Steve Coogan seems to have a particular fondness for name-checking Sprünt Fanta, I recall, with appearances/mentions in both I'm Alan Partridge and Coogan's Run. Perhaps there's a thesis in there somewhere.

None of this is particularly unusual, though. These are merely the sorts of things that would have been found in countless family homes in 1992. Which, of course, is precisely the point.

What's interesting is how differently these details might be approached today. As I understand, modern productions can spend a considerable amount of time checking visible trademarks, licensed characters, artwork and branded products, particularly when they're prominent or feature repeatedly. Even seemingly innocuous background dressing can end up on somebody's clearance list. Imagine the conversation today...

"Can we have cola in shot?"

"... Which cola?"

"Exactly."

Of course, Ghostwatch was made to look like an ordinary family being filmed in their ordinary home, and these little details help enormously. Nobody (well, almost) stops to explain the provenance of the everyday board game or the origins of random pyjamas. They're simply part of the living room furniture.

Perhaps, the most authentic thing about Ghostwatch is that, amongst all the polteritic activity, unexplained noises and increasingly disturbing supernatural occurrences, nobody apparently once thought to put a plain, unbranded bottle of lemonade on the side. As frankly, that simple decision would have distracted even more so than what it worth mentioning on-screen three decades later.

And so, after 34 years, another little piece of Ghostwatch history has been identified, thanks to the keen, eagle eyes of someone who has given this project and the legacy of the show so much over the years. Arfon, you have even more my admiration to add to your growing collection.

Just remember, the next time you look at your fridge, you might want to check that your magnets are still where you left them. You never know who's moving them.

PIPES ffs.

Until next time, Ghostwatchers... try not to have sleepless nights.