Appearance
In a The Sun tabloid newspaper article headlined "Revealed: Why lost star Zippy is orange", Zippy's orange colour is apparently due to presenter Geoffrey Hayes following Dundee United F.C. when living in Dundee, Scotland, during the 1960s and 1970s. The show's producers were set to make Zippy blue - the colour of neighbouring rivals Dundee F.C. - but Geoffrey was convinced otherwise.
| “ | Zippy was going to be blue before I begged the producers to make him tangerine. One of the most common questions I'm asked is "What in God's name is Zippy meant to be?" You have me, a big bear, and a pink hippo and then there's Zippy. I don't think anyone has a clue what he's meant to be, but I do know why he's tangerine. It's because - like me - he's a Dundee United fan.
I lived in Dundee for much of the 60s and even came back a few times in the 70s. I had very happy times there and my fondest memories are of going to Tannadice Park one week and Dens Park the next. I became a United fan. They were languishing in the Second Division in those days, playing teams like Brechin and Alloa. Dundee were the strong successful team at the time, but we thought United played the more attractive football. Because of that I was determined Zippy was not going to be blue. |
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In a BBC online poll from March 2006, Zippy was named as Britain's favourite sporting celebrity fan by a landslide margin with 47% of the vote. Described as Dundee United's biggest fan, several newspapers including the Daily Record, The Courier and Sunday Herald also covered the story in print and online. The poll included lifelong Port Vale F.C. fan Robbie Williams and Delia Smith, a director at Norwich City F.C.. In second place with 9.74% was movie star and Sheffield United F.C. fan Sean Bean. The poll attracted more than 15,000 votes.
Read more about this topic: Zippy (Rainbow)
Famous quotes containing the word appearance:
“Do not look on his appearance or on the height of his stature, because I have rejected him; for the LORD does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the LORD looks on the heart.”
—Bible: Hebrew, 1 Samuel 16:7.
“The complaint ... about modern steel furniture, modern glass houses, modern red bars and modern streamlined trains and cars is that all these objets modernes, while adequate and amusing in themselves, tend to make the people who use them look dated. It is an honest criticism. The human race has done nothing much about changing its own appearance to conform to the form and texture of its appurtenances.”
—E.B. (Elwyn Brooks)
“Every natural fact is a symbol of some spiritual fact. Every appearance in nature corresponds to some state of the mind, and that state of the mind can only be described by presenting that natural appearance as its picture.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)