Scally the Dog was a puppet

mongrel A mongrel, mutt or mixed-breed dog is a dog that does not belong to one officially recognized breed and including those that are the result of intentional breeding. Although the term ''mixed-breed dog'' is sometimes preferred, many mongre ...

dog character, who co-presented the

Children's ITV CITV (short for Children's ITV, also known as the CITV Channel) is a British free-to-air children's television channel owned by ITV plc. It broadcasts content from the CITV archive and acquisitions, every day from 6 am to 9 pm which ...

afternoon service from January 1989 – March 1991 in the United Kingdom.

Children's ITV

Children's ITV's bosses had noticed how successful puppet characters (such as

Gordon the Gopher Gordon the Gopher, also known as Gordon T. Gopher, is an English puppet gopher who first appeared on Children's BBC (CBBC) between 1985 and 1987, listed on television shows by Phillip Schofield on the interstitial or in-vision continuity pro ...

and

Edd the Duck Edd the Duck (originally Ed the Duck) is a puppet duck which appeared on the CBBC interstitial programme ''The Broom Cupboard'' alongside presenters Andy Crane and Andi Peters. His movements were performed by Christina Mackay-Robinson, an assista ...

) had been on its rival,

Children's BBC BBC Children's and Education is the BBC division responsible for media content for children in the UK. Since the launch of specially dedicated television channels in 2002, the services have been marketed under two brands. CBBC (short for Chi ...

, so they decided to create their own version, which was Scally the Dog. He was operated and voiced alternately by three different puppeteers, who were Richard Coombs, John Eccleston and Michael J. Bassett. Coombs was the original operator of Scally and also built the puppet of him too. However, due to him working on other TV projects at the time, he had to share the duties of doing Scally with both Eccleston and Bassett too. During his time at Children's ITV, there was also a short-lived ''Scally'' cartoon strip in the children's TV magazine ''

Look-in ''Look-in'' was a children's magazine centred on ITV's television programmes in the United Kingdom, and subtitled "The Junior ''TVTimes''". It ran from 9 January 1971 to 12 March 1994.Jerry Foulkes, in the afternoons for the rest of '89. In Summer 1989, when Stonewall's Children's ITV summer mornings service launched, he appeared with new recruits, Clive Warren and Jeanne Downs. Scally had several catchphrases that he often used on Children's ITV, one of which was: "Yes, indeedy!", which he usually said when he was happy about something. Another one was: "We're still here!", which was often said by both Foulkes and Scally during their links, referring to them still being on-air at the time. Foulkes left Children's ITV on 22 December 1989, so Downs took over presenting in the afternoons on 2 January 1990, along with Scally. This continued until 29 March 1991, when Stonewall lost the contract to produce Children's ITV back to Central Television (who had also done it previously from 1983–1989). They were both replaced by a solo

Tommy Boyd Timothy Leslie Boyd (born 14 December 1952), better known as Tommy Boyd, is a British radio presenter. Television From 1977 to 1980, Boyd was co-presenter of the ITV children's magazine programme ''Magpie'' replacing Douglas Rae. In 1981, ...

on 1 April 1991. However, both Downs and Scally (operated and voiced by Coombs) made a return to CITV 12 years later on 3 January 2003, when they appeared on a special one-off programme called ''CITV's 20th Birthday Bash'', shown as part of the ITV programming block's landmark 20th birthday celebrations.

After Children's ITV

According to a post by Downs on the ''TV Forum'' website in 1998, the puppet of Scally now resides at the

Museum of the Moving Image The Museum of the Moving Image is a media museum located in a former building of the historic Astoria Studios (now Kaufman Astoria Studios), in the Astoria neighborhood in Queens, New York City. The museum originally opened in 1988 as the Amer ...

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands (county), West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1. ...

, and is owned by someone who used to work on the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...

...

Saturday morning kids' show ''

Live & Kicking ''Live & Kicking'' is a British children's television series that originally aired on BBC1 from 2 October 1993 to 15 September 2001. It was the replacement for ''Going Live!'', and took many of its features from it, such as phone-ins, games, c ...

''.

References

{{reflist Puppets Fictional dogs Television characters introduced in 1989