Rod Hull

Rod Hull is dead! The children's entertainer who was born, raised and named after the Kentish town of Rod, has finally passed away after all these years of agonising waiting. Rod was most famous for his rabble-rousing year-long residency at Nuremberg, in which he whipped the locals into pandemonium with his kids' comedy routines and 'blue' humour.

Rod experimented with several stage shows and styles of delivery before he hit the bigtime with his massive blue hand puppet, 'Emu'. Before this, he tried nude juggling, nude 'stand-up' comedy (an act for which small boys were always on hand to act as 'fluffers'), nude wrestling, nude mime, and nude sexy solo sex shows, nude. It wasn't until his lifetime friend and lover, David Bellamy, suggested he should stop being nude, that Rod struck his winning formula.

Rod and David Bellamy relax in Rod's favourite aftershow bar, the Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen's Club.

Throughout his 32 years on this earth, Rod Hull was always portrayed in his own publicity materials as a happy-go-lucky, cheerful sort of guy - but like all jokers, there was a total cunt hidden beneath the japery. By his own admission, he mixed with the worst scum of the earth in his frantic battle to reach the top rungs of the light entertainment industry ladder. 'A few kneecaps were lost, sure - but none of them were mine! Ha ha!' he cheerfully admitted in his debut appearance on 'The Paul O' Grady Show' - this is the appearance everyone remembers - you know, the one where Emu grabbed at Paul O' Grady's knackers!

Captured 'off-duty', and unaware he was on camera, Rod Hull prepares to eat a stray.

It was, of course, one of his greatest passions which ended up prematurely killing the great man. Experiencing a difficult period, both personally and professionally (his Pink Windmill had been taken away from him, and coincidentally his television show of the same name was cancelled), he couldn't scrape together enough change to pay for entry to Spearmint Rhino Gentlemen's Club. Still a big star at the time, Emu was granted free entry, leaving Rod alone to live out what would be his final few moments. He climbed onto a roof opposite the club, swung on an aerial for a bit trying to get the best view through one of the club's upstairs windows, but eventually slipped on a wet patch of roofing tile and fell to his death. It is said that the final thing he saw through that steamy window was Emu being fellated by one of Trevor and Simon - a fitting tribute to Rod in many ways.

This 'alternative' ventriloquist played a short set at Rod's funeral, including several gags about the dummy 'not being the only stiff in the room'. The joke was on him, of course, because Rod was actually cremated.