When I Googled Stooky Bill

 

 Probably not the original Stooky Bill

 Yeah, I'm not sure sticking that disclaimer up is... Anyway, here – probably – is sculptor and video artist David Hall making a light meal of the fact that the first ever subject to be televised was a puppet. I read somewhere that teething problems meant John Logie Baird's pioneering televisor had required more light than the human epidermis could withstand, but I can't now find where, and the wikipedia entry for "Stooky Bill" only says that human faces had "inadequate contrast" and a puppet would show up better, so maybe it's not true.

 

 

Also probably not the original Stooky Bill (source)

 

 It does sound like an odd reason for using a puppet. And I know the original performers for The Man With the Flower in His Mouth whitened their faces and gave themselves blue lips (although I can't now find where I read that either *UPDATE: it was here.*) Anyway, I learnt of the thrillingly Smirhesesque existence of Stooky Bill yesterday when I decided to do a little more research into television's origins, and then realised he'd actually appeared on this blog before, back in January of 2020. Here's another picture of him alongside a second puppet called simply "James". (That's certainly a lot of lightbulbs.)

 

The original Stoooky Bill. Don't know which one's him though.

 

  And it was in researching Stooky Bill I then learnt of the existence of David Hall, whom I'm only assuming produced the uncredited or miscredited video above from a mention of something very similar on his site here. Hall made a number of similar "TV interruptions" for MTV in the nineties, and earlier, for Scottish Television, back in the seventies. Here's one of those:

 

 I enjoy the brattiness of having the water drain at an angle – Sorry, SPOILERS! This was decades before the tyranny of choice, of course, when television was just something you had on, and if broadcasters decided they were going to take four minutes out to pretend your television was filling up with water, that's what you'd get. I suppose this country never produced an Andy Kaufman because it never needed one. 

 Here's a lovely little film of Hall at work, the kind of work the tag "thinginess" was created for...

 

 

"We've seen you this morning putting grass in what looks like a fish tank."