The "adult" Version
In 1979, the cast and crew of Rainbow made a special exclusive sketch for the Thames TV staff Christmas tape, sometimes referred to as the "Twangers" episode. This sketch featured plenty of deliberate sexual innuendo (beginning with Zippy peeling a banana, saying 'One skin, two skin, three skin, four...' before being interrupted), and was never shown at the time (as it was never intended to be screened to the general public.) It also included Geoffrey convincing the viewers to play with their balls, but if they did not have any balls, they could ask a friend if they could play with his. Jane also claimed that she was banging with Rod and Roger. Soon, Zippy asked them to stop suggesting whether to play with a blowing tube and maracas, so they could start singing the 'Plucking Song'.
The clip became famous after being aired on Victor Lewis-Smith's Channel 4 programme TV Offal (1997) and was referred to as 'the pilot episode' in order to fit into the regular programme segment "The Pilots That Crashed"; however, the clip clearly was not a pilot, as Geoffrey Hayes was the regular presenter at the time. The clip became widespread with the advent of the internet, first as an e-mail attachment and later via online video websites such as YouTube, where to date it has received more than a million hits. This has led to many erroneous claims that the episode was publicly broadcast as a regular episode.
TV Offal also broadcast some very risqué material featuring members of the cast as guests on a variety programme hosted by comedian Jim Davidson in the 1980s; the sketch in question featured former children's TV presenter Tommy Boyd asking a question about Adam and Eve. Boyd and Davidson used some profanities in the sketch, along with some innuendo from George (presumably again not intended for broadcast like the above), and there was one particularly shocking moment when Zippy exclaimed to Geoffrey an expletive phrase quite out of character from his children's television persona. This sketch would in all likelihood have been filmed during rehearsals.
Comedian Bobby Davro also parodied Rainbow as a comedy sketch in his own TV series in the early-1990s, playing the part of Geoffrey alongside exaggerated versions of Bungle and the puppets, which contained some mild sexual innuendo. Davro had appeared in a regular edition of the show, in which he performed impressions of the characters in front of them.
While never explicitly adult, most interviews featuring Zippy and George since the show's demise commonly portray them as somewhat more edgy in terms of personality. For example, in an episode of SMTV Live, they call Bungle an 'idiotic, blundering creature'.
Read more about this topic: Rainbow (TV series)
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