Somebody's not asleep....

What is The Ninky Nonk? Indeed what the dickens is the Pinky Ponk? How does it fly and who’s piloting it? Why is the Tombliboos’ skin stripy but their trousers spotty? And why are they so keen on pulling them down? What does Makka Pakka get out of washing the Tombliboos’ faces so often? And how does Upsy Daisy communicate so well considering her only vocabulary is various intonations of her own name? 

Welcome to the wonderful world of In The Night Garden, the daily slice of surreal, cartoony and baffling nonsense put out by the BBC to round off the programming on Cbeebies every day. BBC1 used to finish the day’s output with a stirring rendition of God Save The Queen, Cbeebies has plumped for tales such as Igglepiggle’s fruitless attempts at finding a quiet spot amongst the trees to get some rest. Spoiler alert; once he finds such a haven he finds he misses his noisy friends too much and, lo and behold, they turn up out of the blue to comfort him. Then he waves his blanket and falls over with excitement. It’s a fitting denouement to another classic episode.

Igglepiggle ponders life's mysteries.

Are the trees in the background real? How do any of the characters fit inside the Ninky Nonk when most shots imply it’s only as high as Upsy Daisy’s skirt. When she’s not hiking it up with her drawstring that is. Why are the Pontipines so prevalent but their blue themed mirror image neighbours, The Wottingers, so rarely seen? Are they off robbing Makka Pakka’s rock collection? Sneakily deflating the Harboos? What do the Harboos do anyway?

Why is Igglepiggle and Tombliboo one word and yet Makka Pakka and Upsy Daisy two? How much LSD was Derek Jacobi forced to imbibe before narrating and singing the gibberish that passes as a script?

All of these questions hang stranded in the air like when the Pinky Ponk farted and parped around the trees and got stuck amongst the foliage. But the biggest and most puzzling question of them all remains: How does all this madness blend together to form the kind of black magic that bewitches little children into sitting transfixed night after night in front of it?