CAREY BLYTON - BANANAS IN PYJAMAS -

Carey Blyton is, of course, the author of the children's book Bananas in Pyjamas, a book of nonsense songs and poems which has made his name well-known throughout the English-speaking world. Indeed, the title song from the collection, 'Bananas in Pyjamas', has assumed almost folk-song status after the issue of 200 5-minute films for children by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, in a television series of the same name using live actors and animation. Very well-known worldwide through these films and through merchandising (soft toys, boardbooks, T-shirts, sweatshirts, etc), the song is now part of the UK's national heritage after poster campaigns in supermarkets throughout the UK by Pickwick Records, who sell the ABC videos in the UK.

The following extract (reproduced with kind permission) is taken from 'Composer Interviews Number One: Carey Blyton' in which Peter Thompson, a one-time pupil and long-time friend of Careys, interviews him about his life and times:

Peter: And another area of your work which has brought you recent international success is the nonsense poetry and songs.
Carey: Oh – Bananas in Pyjamas, yes.
Peter: Which actually originated in the early ’70s, didn’t it?
Carey: Yes, about 1970.
Peter: And that is an extraordinary story itself . . . a pretty ‘nonsensical’ tale . . . ! ! !
Carey: Oh, yes, absolutely. But you know that one.
Peter: But it’s worth hearing again!
Carey: (laughs) Well, you asked for it . . . . somewhere around 1969 or 1970, my wife and I, with our first son, Matthew, aged around four, had visited friends for a meal and we had a long – and as it turned out – tedious car journey to get back home: at night. My wife, Mary, was driving, and I was in the back seat with Matthew, who would just not settle down to sleep. At that time, Donald Mitchell and I were working on The Faber Book of Nursery Songs – there are 91 in the book – so I had a lot of the tunes and the words in my head. For about an hour, I sang my way through a large number of songs, even those that Donald Mitchell and I were hoping to rescue from oblivion, like ‘Lazy sheep, pray tell me why’ – but nothing worked, and Matthew would not settle down. In sheer desperation, I made up a nonsense song, Bananas in Pyjamas, which sounds like the opening chorus of every bad musical you’ve ever heard. Matthew loved it, and I had to sing it over and over again. It worked; he went to sleep! We got back very late and I was about to go to bed when my wife insisted I went to my study and write Bananas in Pyjamas down. I protested. “You won’t remember it in the morning; write it down now”, she said. So I did. And then went to bed.

Matthew wanted more ‘funny songs’, so I made up more nonsense poems, with tunes – about six more – and another ten poems without music, to amuse him. So I really had a small volume, which I offered to Faber & Faber – I was Benjamin Britten’s Editor at the time, working for Faber Music, so it seemed a logical move to offer the book to F & F. One of the directors of Faber & Faber, Peter Crawley, loved it, though I believe he had a hard time getting it accepted. Anyway, the hardback edition was published in 1972 – the paperback edition came out in 1975 – and the Australian Broadcasting Corporation were on to the title-song the following year, 1973. Their permission to use was the third granted, in what, over the years, became about 200 such permissions to use – mostly for the title-song, Bananas in Pyjamas, though other poems were included in very many anthologies of ‘comic and curious verse’. The Children’s TV Department of the ABC used Bananas in Pyjamas in their “Playschool” and “Kindergarten” programmes. During the 1970s and 1980s, there was a limited amount of ABC-originated merchandising: a BIP sweatshirt; a BIP T-shirt and a little soft toy – a little banana wearing blue and white striped pyjamas.

Then, around the end of the ’80s, the ABC Children’s TV Department had the idea of putting actors and actresses into teddy bear and BIP costumes for a live show to tour schools throughout Australia. They gave the teddy bears names: Morgan, Amy and Lulu, and the bananas – B1 and B2 – were 7 feet tall! The live show was a huge success, and I remember reading an article about BIP in the Saturday magazine of the “Sun-Herald”, in which the producer said: “I was outside in the school playground and I heard what sounded like ‘white noise’ coming from the school hall. I knew that this was the moment that the bananas had come on to the stage – and that the children had gone berserk, screaming and shouting. I also knew, at that moment, that we had something very special.”

A five-minute pilot film was made – and that was the start of the ‘Great Banana Phenomenon’ – over 200 such 5-minute films have been made, with stories written by Australian writers, and these are now showing on TV in most countries, with compilations being sold as home videos all over the world also. My song is sung at the start of each little film, and used instrumentally over the end-credits: two bites of the cherry! There are now also over 300 licensed bits of merchandise on sale worldwide, from quilt covers to pencils, from children’s table-ware to cushions. And the live show is finally touring the UK for two years, starting in Cardiff in October, 1999.

(Composer Interviews Number One can be obtained from Fand Music, www.fandmusic.com)