A BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO ROLAND RAT

Either you've come here because you have not a clue of who Roland Rat is or was or you simply wanted to see what I could possibly write about him. It may be of some concern that I can write quite a lot about him. Roland Rat was a puppet of the early eighties who would sit behind his desk and reel off lines such as "Yeeeeahhhhhh" and "Number One Ratfan!" enough times to drive any sane parent watching with their children to entertain thoughts of breaking into the Puppet Operaters Guild armed with heavy duty hand-severing equipment.

Thankfully he came with his own back-up team of assorted rodentia to allow the viewer to settle comfortabley between insanity and mild amusement.

Errol The Hamster: Constantly ridiculed for his love of leeks and general comments of "Oooh, I don't really see the point in all this" Errol hailed from the rolling valleys of Wales, and took a quiet pleasure in male voice choirs and any thing not associated with Roland. Probably the sanest of the bunch, Errol was in charge of 'running VT', and would probably have been much happier on Songs Of Praise.

Kevin The Gerbil: Originally dwelling in Leeds, Kevin's life was transformed when Roland entered it and whirled him into the life of an international superstar's side-kick. To quote his own song: "When I lived in Leeds, life was dull, it was boring, boring. Then somebody changed my life, someone special someone nice. Called Roland, Roland". Though this description of the rat can probably be taken with a pinch of salt as his adoration for Roland is perhaps only equalled by the affection Kevin holds for his pink bucket.

Glenis The Guinea Pig: Roland's up-market girlfriend. She has money, drives a pink cadillac and is often heard to squeal "Sooper, Roeley!" at the appropriate time. Roland witholds that both Kevin and Glenis are his Number One Ratfans as an international superstar can not have only ONE Number One Fan. There is a faint air of tension (i.e, as much as he is capable of) toward Glenis from Kevin as he would have the attention Roland gives her in a trice. Glenis, on the other hand, tends to let this zip over her head and say "Sooper Roeley!" again.

Little Reggie: Roland's little brother whom he is required to look after by his mum - as is the universal rule for older/younger sibling relationships. His role in the team was to pop up from time to time wearing his yellow necktie, grey striped jumper, blue shorts and nappy and shout "'S great, innit!" or a potty-related aside. For this reason he stood as a firm favourite with me for over 11 years.

Roland Rat's influence continues to succeeed him, as this from [the late] Comedy Review's "Gottle O'Geer" (Simon Crook, June '96, issue #4) clearly prooves:

"The only puppet to be credited with saving a television company. With Good Morning Britain about to wave goodbye to its audience after a disasterous drop in ratings, it showed the sheer desperation of a business on its last legs: as all the rats deserted the sinking ship, their reaction was to put one on the telly.

Luckily, somebody at TV-AM had the good sense to sell their soul to the devil in return for a surefire superstar and, although they got considerably short changed, Roland Rat (along with sidekicks Errol The Hamster and Kevin The Gerbil) became a national icon. Of sorts. His popularity was probably more a sign of a country momentarily loosing its marbles, because as far as I can remember there wasn't much more to Roland Rat than saying 'Magic!' and 'Yeeeeey! Ratfans!' in a half-Brummie, half-Essex, all-spiv easy-to-impersonate voice that you'd walk a mile to punch in the throat to stop at source.

After saving TV-AM, Roland went on to record a single with Stock, Aitken and Waterman (called Living Legend), star in his very own jagged computer game on the Sinclair Spectrum 48K (The Roland Rat Race) and finally moved over to the BBC for his own prime-time series.

Thankfully, all the kiddies were sick of seeing his curmudgeonly face on their lunchboxes by then, and we haven't heard a 'Yeeeey!' since."

In fact, this is an unnervingly accurate description of the self proclaimed original, one and only Roland Rat Superstar, even though it does neglect to mention The Ratmobile: an entirely pink car of a make I can't recall that would taxi Roland outside the studio during his own show, which I also remember squealing with exitement at everytime I saw it.

Roland not only had a single but an album, entitled "The Cassette Of The Album", or alternatively - for the cassette version - I would presume "The Album of The Cassette".

The album has many...assets; Errol's "Leeks are Wonderful" is one and Kevin's ode, "Pink bucket reggae" is the other. And I can't help thinking to myself - as it fades out of "Number One Rat Fan", a song that fair grates across the synapses, saved only by Kevin's cheer voice proclaiming "I'm happy to be a number one rat fan with Glennis here. Welcome to our team Glennis, let's celebrate with three glasses of Bitter Lemon!" at the end - I can't help thinking that the whole thing would have fallen apart without Kev and Errol. Roland was quite obviously little more than a front-rat.