LOUIS BURKE | Culture | CONTACT
If you’ve popped on the ABC kids channel recently, you may have found yourself asking the questions ‘Oi! Why the fuck are the Bananas In Pyjamas animated? Where’s my buddies B1 and B2?’
Premiering on the ABC in 1992, Bananas In Pyjamas featured best mates B1 and B2 as they taught Australian children about the virtue of pranking your mates and the sneaky, untrustworthy nature of small business owners.
However, in 2011 Australia was served a revamped version of the show that no one asked for featuring animated Bananas In Pyjamas.
Although the animated series featured modern problems such as Rat In The Hat price gouging Rapid Antigen Tests and charging $20 for an iceberg lettuce, Australians were all thinking the same thing; where is B1 and B2?
As the ABC will not reveal the truth, in an exclusive story by The Advocate we can confirm the decision to switch the show to animation was made due to a falling out between stars B1 and B2.
For years, B1 and B2 were best friends on and off screen, often seen partying together and remembered for making a shared drunken Logies acceptance speech.
According to B2, the brown spots in their relationship started appearing when he got clean and discovered Islam, neither of which were appealing to B1.
“Then one day I just asked him if he was thinking what I was, and he was,” stated B2 over a Zoom call from his Toorak mansion.
“And he was; it was splitting time.”
In a move latter dubbed ‘The Banana Split’, or ‘Ripped PJs’ by tabloids that missed an obvious pun, B2 started a solo career, performing a TEDx talk on sustainable agriculture and being interviewed by Louis Theroux as part of his three part series about fruit in the media (Fruity Threesomes, 2020).
Meanwhile, B1 spiralled further into addiction, hitting rock bottom when his drinking buddy and former TV star Rattus the Rat overdosed in a Surry Hills apartment in 2015.
“It was horrible, my mate was dead, I was coming down on the stairs and B2 didn’t send me so much as a fucking text that day,” stated B1 between puffs of Longbeach smoke.
“Amy, Lulu, Morgan; they all came and visited me and brought me flowers and yellow jelly. Even that Rat in the Hat brought over some munchy honeycakes that were almost at their best before date, the prick.”
“Nothing from B2 though. And he knew how I felt because he always knew, he always fucking knew what I was fucking thinking.”
According to B1, a reunion is not going to happen until B2 apologises. However, B2 states he has nothing to apologise for and that B1s statement caught him unawares.
Although a reunion seems unlikely, fans of the cult series hope B1 and B2 can sort out their differences and break banana bread with each other once more.
