Chance and luck got TV job
Press, 10 March 1977, Page 19
The host of a new South Pacific Television children’s programme, David Kiel, aged 22, walked into television by chance. The channel was advertising for a frontman for “Woolly Tales,” the latest programme in the “Woolly” series, and David had moved to Christchurch from Rotorua in search of a new lifestyle. He went along to an audition by chance. “I nearly blew it, though,” he says. “When it was time for me to sing, I was shaking fit to drop my guitar.
“Then I found one of the strings had broken: I was ready to walk out when one of the other guys lent me his guitar. I was lucky: I got the job.” In the series, David plays Pete, a young Māori shepherd. “Woolly Tales” produced in Christchurch by Kim Gabara, is for four to eight-year-olds. It includes “Screech the Kea” and “Mouldy the Ram.”
The scriptwriter is Patrick Huston, a schoolteacher, who affirms a deep concern for children and what they watch on television.
“They watch TV for more hours than they spend in school,” he says, "This has to mean something, and I think there is an enormous moral responsibility in writing for children’s television.”
The producer explains that poems used in the programme will not win prizes for literary merit, but they are right for the age group involved. “They are obviously poems and if children are prepared to listen to one poem, they may feel encouraged to listen to another,” he said.
Each programme contains an original story, and any of the three characters may tell the story: sometimes they combine. As “Screech the Kea,” Annie Holden departs from her more glamorous role as Annie Whittle, singer and entertainer.
As to the raucous voice, so different from that which has twice earned Annie the Female Entertainer of the Year award and more recently a gold disc, Annie stumbled on it almost by accident. “It just came one day in the earlier series, and developed from there,” she says. “It’s rather tiring at times.”
“Woolly Tales” is a short 15-minute programme which starts on Friday at 3.30 p.m.
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