Fan Dabi Dozi - It’s The Krankies!

Doing the research for the podcast can lead us down some warm, fuzzy rabbit holes of nostalgia. When Nicky and I were discussing what we should cover for a Christmas episode of the Culture Swally, we put a post on Instagram asking for recommendations from our followers and I made a quip about hoping it was something with the Krankies in it.

Brilliantly, Nicky found the Krankies Club at Christmas Special from 1983 on YouTube and sent me the link. I was supposed to be working but decided to have a quick look. Fast forward 2 hours and I’d watched the whole thing, along with about half a dozen other clips of the dynamic duo and done zero work.

I was born in 1978 and when I was a kid, the Krankies seemed to be everywhere, from children’s television to Saturday night light entertainment, not to mention appearing on stage regularly in my native Glasgow, either in pantomime or their own show.

I can appreciate that, if you're under a certain age, or you didn't grow up in Scotland in the 1980s, there's every chance you're not familiar with the Krankies. If you're one of these unlucky people, then allow me to enlighten you.

The Krankies are married couple Ian and Janette Tough. They met at Glasgow’s Pavilion Theatre in 1967. 4.5-foot Janette was performing as a dancer and Ian worked as an electrician. Apparently, he won her heart by flinging sweets at her when she was on stage. She must have had a sweet tooth because they got married the following year and decided to try their luck as a double act on the stage.

They started out as a cabaret act, working the circuit in Scotland. A fellow comedian suggested to Janette she create a character for their comedy show and she came up with Wee Jimmy Krankie, taking advantage of her height to create a mischievous schoolboy character, with Ian playing a vague parental role/straight man.

Their break would come in 1978 after performing their ventriloquist act at the Royal Variety Show in front of the Queen Mother. They became huge television stars of the time, releasing singles and appearing on kids and light entertainment programmes. In 1982 they released the song "We're Going to Spain" in support of Scotland's World Cup campaign. You can hear us discuss the song, plus our other favourite Scotland Football songs on episode 24 of the podcast. Spoiler alert; "We're Going to Spain" isn't one of our favourites.

The Krankies often appeared on the BBC's long running children's light entertainment show, Crackerjack, with Stu "Stewpot" Frances (Ooo I could crush a grape. Ooo I could wrestle an Action Man etc). It wouldn't be long until ITV lured them away to do their own show. The Krankie's Klub ran for one series, including the aforementioned Christmas special between 1983 and 1984.

Joke Machine (1985) and The Krankies Elekronik Komik (1985-1987) would follow, but by the end of the 1980s, it felt like we didn't see as much of the Krankies on TV. They finished off the decade with K.T.V, produced by Border Television, ITV's Southern Scotland franchise. It ran from 1989 to 1992.

Away from children's television, they guest starred in a number of episodes of Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders titular comedy show, including a Christmas Special where Janette plays Anakin Skywalker in a spoof of rubbish Star Wars prequel, The Phantom Menace.

Saunders also put Janette in an episode of Absolutely Fabulous as a midwife and a "Nightmare Baby". Bizarrely, in 2016, in a move I'm sure nobody is proud of, Janette donned “Yellowface” to play a Japanese designer called Huki Muki in Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie. As one may expect, it sparked controversy. The same year, she turned down a role as an “Evil Granny” in Channel 4’s long running soap, Hollyoaks, because she was worried it would damage her image. You couldn’t make it up.

While we may not have seen them on the telly so much over the last 25-30 years, they've continued to perform on stage, often headlining a pantomime in one of the Glasgow theatres and appearing with showbiz legends like John Barrowman and David Hasselhoff. In a 2004 production of Jack and the Beanstalk, Janette suffered a head injury when she fell onto the stage during rehearsal. Thankfully she went on to make a full recovery.

In 2003, readers of the Glasgow Herald voted "Wee Jimmy Krankie" the "Most Scottish Person in the World". Suggesting that when these readers think of Scotland the first person to spring to mind isn't Sir Walter Scott, Robert the Bruce or even William Wallace. Its a middle-aged woman dressed up as a schoolboy from an Enid Blyton book.

In 2004, they released an autobiography where they detail (Hopefully not too much detail) their raunchy past as Swingers. Janette and Ian are still together now, both 75 and happily married. I'm not sure if they still enjoy Swinging and I wouldn't like to speculate.

The couple still pop up on screen occasionally. They starred in 2018's BBC travel show, "The Real Marigold Hotel" and appeared with Harry Hill on "Harry Hill's Alien Time Capsule" in 2019.

So, there's a little potted history of the Krankies. I must read their autobiography, but I'll maybe skip the chapters about their surprising sex life.

I’ll be quite honest, between the ages of probably 4 and 8, I fucking loved the Krankies.

Loved them.

My young heart would soar every time they appeared unexpectedly on one of the Saturday morning magazine shows like Swap Shop or No 73. Crackerjack aired late afternoon on Fridays. I always seemed to be at my Gran and Papa’s when it was on and would lie on the floor on my stomach in front of the television to watch it. My Papa pulling me back by my ankles when he felt I was too close to the screen.

Naturally he didn’t want his only grandson to get square eyes, which to him seemed to be as dangerous for young Scots as playing in a sub station or sniffing glue. Worse, maybe.

When my father dropped the bombshell that Wee Jimmy wasn’t a cool, cheeky kid but in fact a 30 something-year-old woman, I thought he was kidding me on and my enthusiasm remained undiminished.

Janette attended Kilsyth Academy, the same school my father and my aunt attended so I felt a kind of special connection. When they were on tv, if my father or Papa were around, they would always remark; “She went to school wi’ yer Auntie Jean” conjuring images in my mind of Janette and my aunt, walking up the hill together to the academy.

I’ve since discovered this to be at best an exaggeration, at worst, an outright lie. Janette is 5 years older than my aunt, so it’s unlikely they were even at Kilsyth Academy at the same time, let alone chumming each other to school every day.

After my parents separated in 1984, my mother bought tickets for her and I to go and see the Krankies perform at the Glasgow Pavilion, to cheer us up. I don’t remember much of the detail about the show apart from feeling very jealous of the kids on the front row, who were brought on stage to play games and be made fun of by Wee Jimmy. My mother reckons Bobby Davro opened for them, but you’d have to take her word for it.

As strange as their act might seem to a modern audience looking back at their 1980s output, there's something undeniably charming about the Krankies. Watching them on stage back then, whether on the telly or live in a theatre, its clear nobody is having a better time than Ian and Janette. Jimmy's cheeky one liners and torment of the long suffering Ian, is always good humoured and never threatens to become nasty.

Admittedly, some of the humour is a little problematic by today's standards. The 1983 Krankies Klub Christmas Special has a joke about a "China-Man" which Jimmy punctuates by pulling up the corners of his eyes with his fingers.

Casual racism aside, the Krankies seem to define my early years. Whenever I see a picture or footage of them in their heyday, I'm immediately taken back to the smells and sounds of my Grandparent's front room on a Friday night. One bar of the electric fire on ("One bars plenty and don't sit too close in case your clothes catch fire") a glass of Irn Bru from a glass bottle in my hand and the smell of macaroni cheese and oven chips being prepared in the kitchen. Yes, my Grandparents ruined me. But isn’t that the job of all Grandparents? The answer is yes.

Often, just after Crackerjack, BBC One would air an advert for the next day's Saturday Superstore with former disc jockey and Brexit enthusiast, Mike Read, perhaps the most unexciting man ever to host a kids TV show. If we were lucky, the Krankies would be booked to appear and they'd come up behind him and do something funny during the advert.

Kids television and light entertainment in general is very different in 2021. Thanks to streaming services, we can all watch whatever we want, whenever we want and I love it. It means I can watch the Krankies whenever I feel like it. However, back then, programmes for kids were on two channels in the UK between 4pm and 5:30pm through the working week and Saturday mornings.

For all their worth, streaming services will never be able to recreate the anticipation we felt as kids in the 70s and 80s, coming home from school or getting up early on Saturday to tune into our favourite programmes with our favourite entertainers. Or at least the entertainers who didn't turn out to be utter villains.

Like the Fan-Dabi-Dozi Krankies.