I have fond recollections of "Pipkins", even though I was already in my teens when it began, and in my twenties when it vanished from our screens, alas!, for ever. The early episodes featured character actor George Woodbridge as the eponymous Inigo Pipkin, but the real glory days of "Pipkins" occurred under the stewardship of Wayne Laryea, a young black British actor. The undisputed star of the show, however, was Hartley Hare, a character of extraordinary depth and complexity for a children's show. Vain, neurotic and unbelievably camp, the self-deluded Hartley (who rather resembled Frank Williams's Vicar in "Dad's Army") hopelessly held a torch for the coquettish French (!) ostrich, Octavia, who on one occasion pointedly rebuffed his advances with the immortal (and sublimely delivered) put-down: "Oh, 'Artley, you are so SMALL!"
