The Outing of Tinky Winky

“We’re talking about a show for 1- to 4-year-olds; if we had homosexuals in it, they wouldn’t even know it. Tinky Winky is simply a sweet, technological baby with a magic bag.” ~ Teletubbies producer, Kenn Viselman When Teletubbies debuted on the BBC in March 1997, it almost immediately polarized viewers. Some thought the show was a work of genius — an unprecedented effort to create educational content for one-year-olds; others found the plot repetitive and the characters horrifying (“These spacemen will frighten our children,” one concerned German told The Independent). But there was one thing everybody could agreed on: The series was incredibly strange. Four rotund, baby-faced, asexual aliens — Po, Laa-Laa, Dipsy, and Tinky Winky — spent the vast majority of each 25-minute episode waddling about in a pristine country landscape, speaking in high-pitched gibberish and interacting with talking flowers. On occasion, they’d slide down into the “Tubbytronic Superdome” (a high-tech underground cavern) and carouse with an anthropomorphic vacuum cleaner. Other times, they’d awkwardly slurp on tubs of pink custard while reveling in their mutual buffoonery. Fitted with interactive screens on their stomachs and antenna-like communication devices, the characters would often broadcast the repetitive, mundane lives of human children, then applaud their efforts enthusiastically, as if they’d just cracked some age-old mathematical code. The show’s producers (Ragdoll Productions) and distributors (BBC in the UK; PBS in the US) shared the characters’ elation: Teletubbies was a runaway financial success. After just one season on air, the show had attracted two million viewers per episode, grossed $800 million in merchandise sales, and launched a best-selling preschool book series. Even the program’s theme song, “Teletubbies say ‘Eh-Oh,’” saw explosive dividends — it sold over a million copies and topped the UK Singles Chart for 32 weeks. BBC proudly touted the show as a “case study” for making money. “The potential on this one is limitless,” the network’s head of sales told a room full of international distributors; within two years, Teletubbies was being broadcast in 120 countries in 45 languages. But all wasn’t well in Teletubbyland: With instant success came bountiful controversy: Did the meandering plot hold any educational value? Should children under the age of two even be watching television? Stranger, non-scientific accusations were also made: Did the colorful, repetitive nature of the show provide an ideal experience for college kids tripping on psychedelic drugs? And then, sparked by the grumbles of parents and pundits, the strangest accusation emerged: Tinky Winky, the purple teletubby, was gay. Despite the character’s asexuality, and the fact that he was fictional, the story snowballed into a media sensation. The “outing of Tinky Winky” would become, in the words of the show’s producers, the second biggest news story after “Monica Lewinsky and her blue dress.” This is the true story of how Tinky Winky, the purple Teletubby, incited a decade-long homophobic panic. The Rise and Fall of Tinky Winky Dave Thompson, the original Tinky Winky actor, on the Teletubbies set (1996) When a casting call for Teletubbies went out in the Spring of 1996, more than 600 actors auditioned for the role of Tinky Winky. Among the hopefuls was Dave Thompson, an English stand-up comedian and all-around “nutcase.” Weeks earlier, a casting director for the show had come across Thompson on the set of another television program, Harry Hill’s Fruit Fancies, where he’d portrayed a fully-wrapped Egyptian mummy. “He was impressed that I wasn’t claustrophobic,” recalls the actor, “and he figured that was a good trait to have in the Teletubbyland, where you’re inside a costume all day.” Despite being an hour and half late to his call-back, Thompson was given an opportunity to prove his worth: He was swiftly led into a small room, asked to perform an impromptu comedy sketch about childhood, then was paired off with other wanna-be ‘tubbies in a series of “unusual” group workshops. Miraculously, he landed the job. “There are a whole load of people who specialize in wearing costumes — what they call in the trade ‘suit performing’,” he clarified in an English podcast, “but they wanted a person who had something else to offer. I guess I was the guy.” Thompson, with the rest of the cast, was whisked away to a remote countryside farm in  Stratford-upon-Avon (the coincidental birthplace of Shakespeare), and filming for the series commenced. Though he towered above his fellow cast members at 6’3” — nearly 8 feet tall with his costume on — crafty camera angles made him appear much smaller, so as not the scare infantile viewers. As temperatures rose through the summer, portraying the purple Teletubby soon became taxing for the big man. “It was very, very hot in the costume,” Thompson says. “By lunchtime, I could actually ring a pint and half of sweat from my clothes underneath.” The suits, which cost about $57,000 each, were as difficult to maneuver in as they were stifling; an intricate system of bicycle brake levers in the hands controlled the eye and hand movements, wriggling into the get-up required a small village of production assistants, and the head was nearly impossible to see out of: “It was all, ‘this many steps this way, that many steps this way, turn your head this way.’ You couldn’t actually see and you didn’t actually know what was going on and what people were doing around you. We were all being sort of controlled.” Despite these difficulties, Thompson’s rendition of Tinky Winky initially dazzled the show’s director. For the actor, it was a “dream Summer” — full of praise, pats on the back, and positive encouragement. Then, things began to turn sour. When it came to narrating the character’s giggles and squeals in the studio, Thompson’s voice was suddenly “too high-pitched;” a voice-over actor was swiftly brought in to do a “proper job,” giving the actor little chance to correct his tone. As production wrapped up for the first season, Thompson received a letter, seemingly out of the blue: “Your interpretation of the role of Tinky Winky” has not been accepted.” With that, he was terminated from the show’s cast before it even aired. “I wasn’t given any clues as to what I was doing wrong,” he recalls. “I was officially asked to leave in a letter from an accountant just before everyone else went off to the end-of-shooting wrap party.” Dave Thompson: The original Tinky Winky “I am proud of my work for them,” the mustachioed actor later ceded. “I was always the one to test out the limitations of the costume. I was the first to fall off my chair and roll over. I took all the risks.” It was likely these “risks” that resulted in his departure: According to a few of his old co-workers, Thompson had a penchant for “romping around naked” between takes — a quirk that had once earned him the nickname “Kinky Winky” on set. The purple teletubby subsequently seemed plagued: Over the next five years, two more actors portrayed the role (the other three teletubbies each had only one actor for the duration of the entire series). Though “most of the program is made up of generic shots” which feature Thompson (even in later episodes), he sees no dividends. “When they brought the new guy in, that was just for a couple of the dances and for the little sketches,” he says. “So even in the ones with him, I am actually in the show more — though I don’t get paid a penny for it!” Thompson eventually returned to comedy, and became known for his “naked balloon dancing” — particularly the routines he acted out in public parks in Bath, Somerset. He also penned a book, “The Sex Life of a Comedian,” which tells a familiar story: A Stand-up comic gets a job wearing a furry costume on a kids’ television show and then gets fired. Tubbygate: How Tinky Winky Incited a Homophobic Panic On March 31, 1997, Teletubbies made it’s public debut on England’s BBC Television. Before long, the show’s purple character began to fall under scrutiny. It began in July, with a letter to British popular culture magazine, The Face. “Tinky Winky,” wrote Sussex University lecturer Andy Medhurst, “may be the first queer role model for toddlers.” A few days later, The Guardian, trumpeted the purple Teletubby as “a gay icon who prances around in a particularly campy way” (“campy” being British slang for “blatantly homosexual”). The British media opened its floodgates: Over the ensuing months, dozens of talk shows, radio programs, and newspapers hotly debated the sexuality of the children’s show character. As Thompson’s firing became public information, the media gave it a sensational spin: The actor had been let go for “acting too gay.” At the same time, the show’s popularity soared. By the end of the first season, nearly $800 million in merchandise — pajamas, toys, and videos — had been sold, garnering the interest of networks across the world. Distributor PBS recognized its potential, bought the American rights, and, in the Spring of 1998, began airing the program in the United States. Soon enough, the Tinky Winky controversy crossed international lines. With news of the Teletubbies’ US arrival, The Washington Post swiftly declared that “the gay Tinky Winky” was the “new Ellen Degeneres” (implying that Degeneres’ time as the “chief national gay symbol” was over, and that the Teletubby was taking her place). “Tinky Winky comes across as a big fabulous fag,” declared LGBT magazine, The Advocate. “He’s become as gay icon…[and] the same fundamentalists that boycott Disney are going to flip when they see him.”