Insomniac minds want to know about Ringo & Thomas
Bobbin is a big Thomas the Tank Engine fan. She has a whole little wooden set constructed on our living room coffee table. Truth be told it was Tim and I who put the tracks and roads together, but nary a day goes by when you don't hear Bobbin "Toot toot"ing and banging and shouting exclamations of "Uh oh! Bidge out! Wheh'd it go?!" as you hear the clatter of a wooden tunnel hitting the floor and the sound of a tiny train chugging around the corner and then flying off the table in the absence of track.
Her cousin is a big fan too.
So when we had some of the family over for dinner this past weekend, the subject of Thomas invariably came up. Thomas wasn't really big when the rest of us were growing up. at least not in the US. But I remembered watching Thomas when I was 13 or so on TV. I think my sister used to watch it with me. Only I didn't remember any of the trains having voices. And I remembered Ringo Starr narrating.
Or did I? No one else recalled any connection between Thomas and Ringo. Was senility setting in early? I had to know. So of course, I turn to Wikipedia, and found all of the answers to my Thomas the Tank Engine questions, and many more interesting tidbits.
The series was first broadcast in the UK in 1984. I believe it was first broadcast in Canada at the same time. I can't imagine being older than 13 or so and still voluntarily sitting through an episode. And as it turns out, my memory hadn't failed me. The first two seasons were narrated by the Ringo Starr, and none of the characters themselves actually had any voices. The TV series was based on a series of books called "The Railway Series" that were created by Reverend Wilbert V. Awdry, who first invented the characters and stories in 1942, to amuse his son Christopher while he was ill with measles. It was his son that bestowed the name of Thomas upon the stories' starring engine.
Other narrators of the series after the first two seasons apparently included the likes of George Carlin and Alec Baldwin. But Ringo's voice is the one permanently associated with Thomas in my Canadian brain.