1972 - The Basil Brush Show : Special guests - Paul McCartney and Wings Se6Ep8

This episode first shown on Saturday 24th June, 1972 on BBC1 at 17:00pm.

The Basil Brush Show - Hosted by Derek (Mister Derek) Fowlds and Basil. With special guests Paul McCartney and Wings, Joyce Grant, Jacqueline Clarke, Barrie Gosney, Stuart Sherwin and The Roger Stevenson Marionettes.

Basil Brush is a fictional fox, best known for his appearances on daytime British children's television. He is primarily portrayed by a glove puppet, but has also been depicted in animated cartoon shorts and comic strips. The character has featured on children's television from the 1960s to the present day. He has also appeared in pantomimes across the UK.

The original Basil Brush glove puppet was designed by Peter Firmin in 1962 for an ITV television series, and was voiced and performed by Ivan Owen until his death in October 2000.

Ivan Owen took great care to ensure that he, personally, never received any publicity. Professionally, only Basil had a public persona, with Owen himself remaining entirely unknown. This helped give the character believability, making Basil appear to be real, since—unlike Harry Corbett and Sooty, for example—the audience never saw the puppeteer. Owen modelled Basil's voice on the actor Terry-Thomas, giving the puppet a touch of well-cultivated class.

Basil first appeared on television in 1962, in a series called The Three Scampies, a story of an out-of-work circus act. The human was Howard Williams, Ivan Owen animated and voiced Basil and Wally Whyton animated and voiced Spike McPike, a very aggressive Scottish hedgehog also made by Peter Firmin.

In the mid-1960s Basil became a supporting act for the magician David Nixon, upstaging Nixon on the latter's BBC1 show Nixon at Nine-Five in 1967 and The Nixon Line (1967–68), to such good effect that Basil was offered his own show.

(Wikipedia)