Toy story - Zoe Williams follows the sneaking rehabilitation of Enid Blyton's un-PC puppet
The largest-selling video for under-fives in the run-up to Christmas last year was Noddy and the New Taxi. Before you lose interest, bear in mind that such young children rarely make their own purchasing decisions, otherwise they'd all have a cake as big as the sky. So these Noddy fans are grown-up people, in the 25-40 age bracket, who make all the rules. These people, in other words, are society. Society likes Noddy. For a long time, the puppet non grata of the cartoon world, Noddy and Big Ears - or, as the BBC website has it, "his aurally over-endowed sidekick" (and they wonder why we gripe about the licence fee!) - have outstripped young pretenders everywhere, from Teletubbies to Tweenies.
This is a much bigger deal than you think. People have been objecting to this toy for decades, and not just here, but also in Germany, where his name is Purzelknirps. He is alone in the plaything kingdom for linking debates about all the major prejudices of the past century - racism, homophobia, sexism - and being rubbished in all of them. His sneaking rehabilitation should not be allowed to pass without comment.
In fact, the race case against the brightly coloured knick-knack has been pretty much solved. The problem was the Golliwogs, from Golly Town, who were slightly more offensive than the Robinson Golliwog due to their feckless criminal activity (they stole Noddy's car). Enid Blyton was a priceless bigot. It is unarguably the case that without the persistence of her slothfully vile characterisations, the Macpherson report would never have been necessary. And quite a long time ago - 1989 - these criminals were replaced with Goblin thieves, whom nobody could complain about because they were fictional. Except the Scandinavians. They complained. Never mind, eh?
Three years later, multiracial goodwill spread further with the introduction of Dinah Doll, a "black, assertive, ethnic-minority female" (that's the BBC website again, which makes me want to spit). She simultaneously solved the racial and feminist issue by replacing Tessie Bear, who was too subservient to the "males". Like the happy leagues of assertive females on whom she is based, Dinah Doll was a great multi-tasker.
I should explain here that I put "males" in inverted commas because the characters lack genitals, not because I'm making any judgement on their sexuality. The homophobia issue is slightly more complex and has never been resolved. Many people claim to see strong evidence in the books that Noddy and Big Ears were having sex after lights out. In the 1980s, "Noddy" was actually slang for "gay", before people realised that it wasn't offensive enough to be an insult, nor affirming enough to be cool. I'm dubious about all this - sure, there was a lot of fun in the bedroom, but I'd contend that if Blyton for one second even considered that kind of fun in the bedroom, she would have chilled out, and not felt the need to grind down already oppressed members of society for her entire adult life (though I am aware of flaws in the "she-needed-a-good-seeing-to" school of literary criticism).
Anyway, others counter-claimed that Noddy and Ears couldn't possibly have been gay because that was disgusting. They were accused of being homophobic by the original claimants, and a debate was sparked on the one issue that, had the counter-claimers never got involved, Blyton could have got away with being decent about, if only by accident. It should be remembered that kids' characters are always being called gay. There was a gay Teletubby (the one with the handbag), and Bungle from Rainbow had his sexuality called into question more than once. I'm not saying they're not gay, but I do stand by my point about genitals.
Whatever. Since 1992, Noddy's been basically OK, ideologically speaking, with nothing to frighten the liberal horses. In 1999, he celebrated his 50th birthday, and four million books were being sold about him worldwide. By last Christmas, he was gearing up to be a market leader, but that didn't stop his mummy and daddy - the Labour peer Waheed Alli and the Tory peer Viscount Astor - trying to slave trade him at the beginning of December. To clarify, they are deputy chairman and non-executive chairman of Chorion, the company that owns Noddy, which was trying to flog its children's division. The troubled toy had been effectively renounced by both left and right.
On mature consideration, the popularity of our surprised-looking animatron bespeaks no return to a world of Enid Blyton ethics, nor any kind of ironic provocation of political correctness. Perhaps he is just more interesting than his successors. I don't watch it regularly, but I believe all the Teletubbies ever say is "eh oh".
Zoe Williams is a columnist for the Guardian
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