Looks Unfamiliar: Mitch Benn – Rumours Line-Up Rainbow

Songs From The Thames Television Children's Programme Rainbow by Telltale (Music For Pleasure, 1973) - listen to Mitch Benn and Tim Worthington talking about it in Looks Unfamiliar.

Looks Unfamiliar is a podcast in which writer and occasional broadcaster Tim Worthington talks to a guest about some of the things that they remember that nobody else ever seems to.

Joining Tim this time is musician, comedian and writer Mitch Benn, who’s painting the whole world with Monday Morning 5.19 by Rialto, Jools Holland’s one-off Channel 4 oddity The Laughing Prisoner, Oh Baby by Rhianna, Pocketeers, ‘Adult Tiswas‘ O.T.T. and the original pre-Geoffrey incarnation of Rainbow. Along the way we’ll be helping Patrick McGoohan to escape from an angry cupcake, visiting a pub full of men playing Rat-A-Tat, and wrestling with the multidimensional implications of the existence of Rhianna Prime.

If you enjoy Looks Unfamiliar, why not buy us a coffee here?

Monday Morning 5:19 by Rialto (EastWest, 1997) - listen to Mitch Benn and Tim Worthington talking about it in Looks Unfamiliar.

About Mitch

Mitch Benn is a comedian, musician, journalist, author, actor and pretty much everything else along those lines you can think of. You can find Mitch’s website here and his Patreon here and follow him on Bluesky at @mitchbenn.bsky.social.

Buy A Book!

There’s lots more about Rainbow in its numerous iterations – some more widely loved than others – and tons of other shows that essentially just copied it with different regional puppets in The Golden Age Of Children’s TV, available in all good bookshops and from Waterstones here, Amazon here, from the Kindle Store here and directly from Black And White Publishing here.

If you’ve enjoyed this, you’ll enjoy Tim’s book Can’t Help Thinking About Me, a collection of columns and features with a personal twist. Can’t Help Thinking About Me is available in paperback here or from the Kindle Store here.

Alternately, if you’re just feeling generous, you can buy me a coffee here. Rialto could probably have done with one at 5:19am to be fair.

Further Listening

Mitch has appeared on Looks Unfamiliar talking about Nobody’s House, Don’t Stand So Close To Me ’86 by The Police, Cyborg and Muton, Orion, Two Stage Self-Assembly Ice Cream Cones and Get Stuffed here, 54321, Logan’s Run The Series, Matchbox Zoomy Balloonies, Action Man’s Atomic Man and Bullet Man, King Swamp, and fifties nostalgia in the seventies here, Star Turn Challenge, Mr Hicks from Grange Hill, Striker, Lines by The Planets, Night Raven and international celebrities acting in pop videos here, Stars by Hear’n’Aid, Into Infinity, The Humanoid, A Man Called Sloane, BusyBodies and The Kids Are Alright by The Pleasers here, No Memory by Scarlet Fantastic, The Flipside Of Dominick Hide, The Deceivers, Eureka!, Lady Sovereign and Jentina’s feud and Mego Pocket Heroes here and Channel 4’s pre-launch trailers, Imagination by Belouis Some, Space Sentinels, Simon Dutton as The Saint, How To Be A Complete Bastard by Adrian Edmondson and Maskatron here.

Mitch has also appeared on Tim’s Marvel Cinematic Universe podcast It’s Good, Except It Sucks talking about Captain America: Civil War, which you can find here.

Mitch also appears in The Best Of Looks Unfamiliar alongside Grace Dent on a mysterious clown that leaned into the television screen and waved, Deborah Tracey on Five To Eleven, Joanne Sheppard on Matchbox Fighting Furies, Lucy Pope on Barcode Battler and Ben Baker on the 1990 Bullseye Christmas Special; you can find it here.