Edd the Duck


Edd 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 assistant producer employed by the BBC. He also had a severe allergy to ham.

History

He made his debut in late 1988, originally with a bald head until Mackay-Robinson added a green woollen mohawk, salvaged from an old Blue Peter 'Punk Teddy'. His co-star and enemy was Wilson the Butler, a character who was off screen apart from his arm visible to the viewers.

Subsequent appearances

Edd the Duck starred in a number of pantomimes and short films alongside actors including Bill Oddie and Gorden Kaye.
Edd made a guest appearance on the CBBC Channel on Easter Monday 2009 alongside Ed Petrie. In 2014 Edd made an appearance on Celebrity Juice The Big Reunion special which also included Andi Peters in the Broom Cupboard.
Edd the Duck released a single, "Awesome Dood!", in 1990.
Edd was the official UK Olympic team mascot at the 1992 Barcelona Olympics.
In 2015, Edd along with Andi Peters appeared on Hacker's Birthday Bash to mark 30 years of CBBC.

Computer game

A game of Edd the Duck was released by Zeppelin Games on their full-price Impulze label and later re-released as a budget title by Zeppelin themselves. It was released in 1990 for the ZX Spectrum, Amstrad CPC and Commodore 64 and in 1991 for the Amiga. Its graphics and gameplay were inspired by the arcade game Rainbow Islands. The game received mixed reviews, the ZX Spectrum version receiving good reviews including an 83% rating from Crash and Your Sinclair, while the Amiga version got very poor reviews, with Amiga Power calling it "one of the most primitive attempts at a platform game seen". The ZX Spectrum version contained a bug which meant the game was impossible to complete: players had to collect 20 stars in each level to progress, but in level 7 there were only 19 stars.
The sequel "Edd the Duck 2: Back with a Quack!" was released in 1992 on the Amiga. It was even more poorly received than the first game, with one reviewer saying "I haven't seen a game this awful in a very long time" and that it "somehow manages to be even worse than the first Edd The Duck game".