LOUIS BURKE | Culture | CONTACT
“Mummy, who is that?” asked three-year-old Jimmy Ticehurst, as his mother Susanne (32) drove the family Prius past a bus bearing the image of a dead-eyed, suited man.
Paying attention to the traffic, Susanne Ticehurst gave the advertisement the most careless of glances before coming to an incorrect but understandable conclusion.
“Oh, they’re doing another Thunderbirds reboot,” stated Susanne, mistaking the expression of radio host Ben Fordham for a puppet from the popular ‘60s TV series Thunderbirds.
Thunderbirds was a British sci-fi series that ran from 1965 to 1966, known for its use of groundbreaking puppet technology that combined the fun of expressionless faces with the thrill of miniature models on strings.
“What’s Fundabirds [sic]?” asked Jimmy as if he was going to do anything with that information.
“It was a show-wait, no hang on, nah it’s a poster for Ben Fordham live on 2GB. Ah wow, he looks…different.”
Ticehurst is not the only one to mistake the Alan Jones replacement for a cast member of the supermarionation series, with many callers to the morning talkback show dialing in and asking to speak with Virgil.
“Why’d they make him look like that for mummy?”
She said she didn’t know.
