Warrick Brownlow-Pike: From Watching The Muppets To Working With Them

0:00They said, what do you want to be when you grow up? And I was like a puppeteer. My only answer is I want to be a puppeteer. I don't really have a plan B.

0:05Ben Hanlin: I just have to make this work. Welcome back to What's the Trick? I am your host, Ben Hanlin, and this is the podcast where I sit down with the world's most creative people and try and understand their creative process. And today is a first because we are sitting down with our first ever professional puppeteer and it's Warrick Brownlow-Pike. Now, Warwick is a friend of mine and we started working together on CBBC because he actually plays Dodge the dog. If you've got any young kids, you'll know Hacker and Dodge. But let me tell you about Warwick and why I think this is an amazing, fascinating conversation for everyone.

0:40Ben Hanlin: So Warwick's from London when he was. I don't want to ruin this too much because I think we get into it. But when he was two or three years old, he saw the Muppets. It changed his life. and he basically went from being a kid who's obsessed with being a puppeteer to getting a job on CBBC to eventually getting a job on the Muppets and working with his actual childhood heroes and I wanted to sit down with Warwick and talk to him about this because it's very rare that you meet somebody in life that at three years old four years old knows exactly what they wanted to do and somehow does it and i used to sit and be fascinated when it when we'd work together and you just tell me about how passionate he is about this world of puppetry and the muppets he's pretty much the muppets biggest fan so that's what we talk about so this is a great episode on understanding how he did that how did he go from being a kid to getting his dream jobs and then when he got his opportunity how did he manage to make sure he got into the film industry he's a and the other thing with warwick as well knowing him he's incredibly hard working but he's also a bit of a hustler and he's always able to figure out how to make things happen which i've always found really interesting so that we get into that and also i don't know much about the muppets which are one of the biggest brands in the world so he shares a bit of how jim henson makes this so another completely different conversation that you're not going to hear anything else like this this week i really enjoyed it and i hope you do too because this is warwick brownlow pike on what's the trick how does a kid fall in love with the muppet and puppetry and then eventually end up having a career as a puppeteer so start from the beginning for me please mate not in one word yeah yeah in one sentence go no um well i watched the muppet show at about the age of two my mom was busy she put me in front of the tv and the muppet show was on yeah so like i think i had a gap in my brain at that point that needed filling.

2:38And if the snooker was on, I'd have been a snooker player. But The Muppet Show was on. I loved it. I still love it to this day. I watched it yesterday. And she was like, oh, he likes that. I'll put him in front of the TV next time. And I loved it the next time. So she videoed it and she started videoing them and I'd watch it again and again and again.

2:58Ben Hanlin: And I was just obsessed. I am obsessed. I just love it. I love that world. It's not our world. It's another world. it's all good it's all happy it's all like bright and funny and silly so that was it that was like the seed of my life started there and what i've always loved whenever we've spoken is like from a very early age you had this passion of like i want i love this thing this is what i want to do and you did it so let's try and go through it step by step so first of all why do you think looking back now that that out of all of the things that you could have been drawn to why do you think that attracted your attention or it's tangible they are 3d things like a cartoon like you watch a cartoon yeah and you kind of passively watch it and you don't think well i can touch it yeah yeah or maybe i could do that you know like yeah it's a cartoon so how do you make a cartoon whereas a puppet it's like a toy you know i've got toys in my bedroom i could wiggle it around and make it talk so i think like it's so instant in the for the brain you're like it looks like this i have something similar i can do that a bit like really accessible a bit like learning a magic trick you can watch a card trick grab a deck of cards and if you've got instructions you can make it become a thing and you can then entertain with practice yeah yeah okay so let's go through the stages so you were two um when did it start to become a bit of a career what's the next big chapter it built momentum like pretty soon after because they bought me puppets yeah like for Christmas and stuff, they bought me Muppet Puppets, Sesame Street Puppets.

4:28So very soon I was like playing with these puppets. I didn't know it, but I was putting in my hours, my 10 ,000 hours to becoming like a master of that thing. So I didn't know it, but from the age of two, like I was putting in my 10 ,000 hours of becoming a master of that thing because I was doing it for fun. So I was doing it every second I could, you know, annoying people with it, trying to instain people with it. And then, so we'd like take my toys and tear them open and pull the stuff in out so i could put my hand inside them oh right yeah to make them a puppet and then by doing that we were like oh that's how you know that's how a toy's made it's quite similar to how a puppet's made so this must this is when i'm like eight nine ten this must be the pattern to make a puppet and so my mom's like a genius uh well she can do anything but she is great at sewing making things so we were together i'd be like well this i think this is the pattern and if we kind of duplicate it and then we put it together and sew it up it will become the shape of kermit so we just did it like we just bought the stuff and did it so i was making puppets by

5:33Ben Hanlin: the age of seven eight nine ten and this thing a lot of people don't realize that puppeteers often as well make their own yeah i don't tend to a lot now i do like if i have to um i made a couple for dodgers pop school i make them if like i come up with an idea and i'm like okay i need this now yes i need to get a proof of concept i need to prove the point that it works in 3d yeah but normally i would design them and get somebody else to make them yeah um because i've not put practice into making them so but let's even jump forward again so you're a kid in london i'm guessing you don't know anybody in the puppet space i'm guessing you don't know anyone in telly or that space how do you go from being a kid or a teenager at this point who's fascinated and that's the thing you want to be and you've gone i want to be a puppeteer how did you then start making your ways into that well the great thing about it is you can again my mom was very technical she was like we get a video camera we hook up to the television so when you perform on the video camera you can see your performance on the television which is exactly how all puppeteers work they hold the puppet above their head the camera shoots the puppet and we watch a monitor with the camera's feed on it yeah so i was doing that at 10 you know in the front room yeah i'd put a record on put the puppet up lip sync to the song you were doing lipstains like on tiktok before it was a thing rewind it watch it go missed a few beats try again do it again so i was like just honing and honing but only for the love of it not yeah i always said they said what do you want to be when you grow up and i was like a puppeteer there's my only answer is i want to be a puppeteer i am a puppeteer i want to be a puppeteer that's the end i love that i just love that yeah yeah it's just like blind obsession i suppose but but it's great because it's not one of those it's like you know i want to be a race car driver yeah you kind of can't do that until you're of an age when you can learn to be yeah you could learn to drive a car but like i could just do it bam straight away i can play with toys i can play with puppets i can okay so let's fast forward again so you've got this obsession you got you said to your mom people around you this is what i'm going to be yeah so then let's fast forward to how did you start getting your first job yeah well it takes a lot speaking about parents like it takes a lot of of their encouragement yeah you know what i mean like they could have being going no no yeah don't do that it's really bad yeah but they didn't they were just like okay you want to go here to learn about this thing you want to go to this museum and look at this thing you want to get these books or videos and they encouraged me to learn and took me wherever i needed to go to so that's a big part of it i think just like the encouragement or even if not encouragement just be like yeah cool you do what you want to do yeah um so because i'd done that and they helped me set up the video cameras and they helped me buy materials to make puppets and I practiced so much.

8:12When I came to, I googled a puppeteer audition back in 2007 and I found a CBeebies audition

8:19Ben Hanlin: and I went to it. How old are you at this point? 21. So you're 21 and you've been effectively just obsessed through your teens at this day and now there's this audition. Yeah, but always kind of moving forward with it, really. Maybe not in a conventional way but like going to puppet festivals which sounds really geeky and it probably is but it's great. Like I love it. I go to magic festivals. Yeah, like the niche. but we love them yeah and meeting people and like just talking about you know having these really long boring discussions about the minutiae of puppetry so i bet you at this point you had your puppet heroes where you where we would just be watching telly but you began oh well that's done by so and so because there's only a handful of people yeah and like doing this are like five we're on the muppet show five or six people so i could be like ah that's the style of that person that's the manipulation style that's the voice style and stuff like that yeah so what was the character what was the audition see babies the audition was for a show called space pirates i was um i suppose i just auditioned as a puppeteer but i got the role as an assistant puppeteer because i had actually no experience of making a tv show how do you assist a puppeteer so the lead puppeteer does a head and maybe an arm on an arm rod or a glove hand yeah and you would be the second hand you would just literally as you'd be this hand or you'd be doing the rods or if it's got a tail you do the tail you do the bits that the lead performer can't do on their own yeah yeah so i would just do i just do the rods we had dance routines so like you do choreographed dance routines and stuff uh which was great but i'm like i want to get my hand inside a puppet yeah i want to get my hand inside i want to do the head i want to do the voice i want to do the character character um and they when i went for that audition they said that my style was very muppety so i was just like yes like you know job done job's done here yeah yeah i've achieved exactly what i wanted i wish somebody could say that to me like it's so and were you up against much competition was there another load of 21 year olds cute or is it pretty much there were three of us assistants on the show and then there were three lead puppeteers or three characters so each each lead performer has an assistant so uh may we're not obsessed i don't think as much as i was yeah they were like no let's let's get out the house a bit sometimes so so i'm going to fast forward and make an assumption here so you're in the door at cbb's obviously i know you you've got an amazing work ethic you're clearly passionate people went this is the guy we want around and then that leads to more opportunities yeah yeah what was then exactly your big was it so yeah so i was there with a puppeteer called dave chapman who had been doing cbbc presentation the broom cupboard in the 90s with otis the aardvark yeah and and also they had a send in one day and said what you obsessed with and i wrote in saying puppets and dave called me between links and was like oh yeah like i'm the otis the ardua puppeteer and you know i've worked with the muppets and just gave me like some nice advice and stuff so that was the first time i'd spoken to a real life how old professional puppeteer 10 11 you're 10 and the puppeteer takes a break i mean you probably wouldn't be able to just call we know yeah and he like he said like you were the only person i ever called you don't we know that you don't call people like you don't just find a letter that goes that's nice when i'll ring them hey so but he he was like there's a puppeteer kid like i must encourage them so he calls this 10 year old kid yeah and then fast forward 11 or 12 years i turn up at the at the i got the audition got the job as assistant turned up at elstree studios and there he was and he's like warwick i remember your name and we became like good friends and i admire his work so much and now we work together like you know we we share gigs and stuff um and so he had done the puppet in the brunt cupboard that puppet human thing had not been happening for like a decade or something yeah they wanted to bring it back in 2007 so they asked him i think does he want to do it he'd done it for like seven years or something yeah which is a long time and he said this guy might be worth seeing yeah so i went and auditioned and yeah seems like i was the right person for it but how quickly then did the most probably the famous character you've ever done which if anyone's been grown up in the last 20 years probably on british tv you had hacker and dodge and you would dodge yeah so where did that how did that conversation come about hacker came to be in the broom cupboard hacker was already a dog in another tv show just a real life wolf wolf dog yeah a pet not talking you know full-on personality and uh when we were away doing the ed and out show shows i suggested phil come and cover me on the slot so they needed someone to come and cover ed to present and and a puppeteer to together so they said well we've got this dog they auditioned some people they chose phil which clearly was the right decision because it's the funniest man we've ever met phil is the person plays hacker the dog who's obviously very funny innocent men meme yeah thing um and so then when we came back from doing our shows the series we were shooting they said uh well this dog is going down like they're selling like hotcakes you should do another dog uh and so me and phil were like you know i don't know if like you don't need two things exactly the same yes so mine had bigger ears and a white stomach but like we still don't really think it's great to have two dogs like two things so similar and i spent a long time making sure that mine wasn't the same as his because i think everybody really wanted it to just be another version of that you can't do have two things the same so creatively you said right so they said to you the brief is we want another dog and you said okay well we're not going to push against you too much because we want the job but what we will push against is let's not give you exactly what you want let's manipulate yes and always like you know organically evolve with it it started out as like a phil mitchell type character really in the beginning and now is a six-year-old pup yes cute pup and then i suppose where you both evolved uh is you tend to do more cbb's and how could there's more cbc i always wanted to be doing cbb's i always wanted to really be doing preschool stuff um which i'm now doing quite a lot so I love that.

14:17Ben Hanlin: So now you're in The Door, you're doing Dodge, you've done that for years and obviously this started as a kid who fell in love with the Muppets and then soon, I know it's not soon after but and then the Firchester Hotel which is a, do you call it a Muppets production? It's a Sesame and CBeebies co-production. Sesame Street. Yeah so Sesame Street were making a Sesame Street style show in the UK with the characters and you got to finally work with that company. Yeah, it's like a 40 Towers meets Sesame Street. Yeah. So the great thing about that show is you have guests. It's a hotel. You have hotel guests coming in every day, every week, whatever, every episode.

14:57And that means you can, I was one of the guest puppeteers. So I would do the guests coming in, which means that I can like do a different character today and a different character this afternoon, a different character tomorrow. So you're like, you've just got to pull all these things out of you. Like a character, an old-fashioned character actor i suppose which is like lovely scary because you're like i can't do the same voice i can't do the same thing so you make a move different each time like the way they walk or you have to give them a different voice each time a different personality like completely different you don't want somebody to watch and go oh that guy did the puppet in the last episode

15:29Ben Hanlin: yeah but also i suppose you know this is the biggest production company in the world yeah to do puppet-based shows and you've got an opportunity but because you've done at this point years of live telly every day and there are lots of skits and sketches you were match fit ready for that yeah yeah i was primed like yeah couldn't have come a more perfect time really and then you had this character gonga and what i find really interesting so again i'm assuming most people probably haven't sat and watched for chester hotel because they're not seven here but um in this there was a character like a puppet that you but you what's really interesting is you took what was a smallish character and because you're clever right warrior and you know how to play the game you i'm gonna completely guess here you sat there and went i'm not just gonna have a small character in a small show yeah it's evolved and now he's a main character in the muppets on sesame street on sesame street muppet yeah so you've taken him from this show in england to now he's a sesame street muppet yeah yeah how do you do that well the i suppose the the the real answer is you have to be good right and give it your all right i wish i was giving it my all i was giving it my all because i adore it i love it you know yeah so the true answer to that question is you have to be good really good and apply yourself 100 which i do anyway because i love it so much and i adore you know the sesame street characters uh the legacy is amazing i'll do whatever i can to help that survive and continue and be and be um you know loved uh so i second season the guy who did him in the first season didn't come back in the first season he hit the gong to signify it's tea time and that was kind of it they didn't use him anymore often they would repeat those bits so he'd hit the gong and he'd vibrate or he'd hit the gong and he'd fall over uh and a few people did that mostly a guy called mac did it but a few people kind of just picked it up and did it because it was just like a kind of not a biggie uh but i love that puppet when i saw it on day one i was like oh that's a great puppet that just looks like you know insane he's got bug eyes and he's furry and he's kind of a cave manny and it looks like a muppet from the 60s which really appeals to me okay you know if you know your muppet history you can look at that's a vintage muppet that looks like a vintage one exactly like oh my gosh scrawny and not not perfect you know yes just looks like it's thrown together but it's not like you know it's been put together by a master puppy builder and yeah but um it looks like it's it's scraggly anyway so second time around so i said if you let me do this i'll make it a success which is bold yeah but i feel like i have seen that through and achieved that but but let's look at that because this is where i've worked with you you are an entrepreneur in certain ways and i've seen this when we when there was things like negotiating contracts or deals or just things like that you're obviously 100 passionate about what you're doing but you've got an eye on the bigger picture so did you basically walk storm into their office and go i want that muppet i didn't stall no i'm joking because i had a part i had the cards to get me in and pass but i did walk up to the desks and say like i want to do that and i will make it a success if you let me and they i didn't hear anything again until the first day i got employed to work on the show i'd already been on the show the first time around so i kind of knew i was going to be on it so the first time around i i did a week on a week off i did dodge one week yeah for just to the next and they're only upstairs and downstairs the studios so coming and going coming and going and the second time i was like i just want to be here the full time i don't want to keep coming and coming and going like i just want to immerse myself in it um which was great because that's when you can build up the traction so i took so so we got to rehearsals and somebody was handing out the puppets and they handed it to me and I was like, so does that mean this is mine?

19:17And they were like, well, I don't know. I'm just handing out these puppets. Like I've just been told to give these out to people. So I'm like, hmm, seems like it might be mine then. And I just ran with it. It was in the background in the kitchen with Cookie Monster. I came up with hundreds and hundreds of bits and sketches and funny bits, funny stuff, just business. You know, like if you're not going to give me any lines, I'll be funny right in the back, which is the Muppet way. Like you've got a thing, don't waste it.

19:42Ben Hanlin: Oh, okay. So at the beginning, you haven't got any lines, but you're like, I'm going to be the best damn background. Yeah, you've ever seen it. Best slash focus pulling, most focus pulling. So occasionally they come into the kitchen and me and Cookie Monster would do a bit of funny stuff, you know, just to start the scene or to end the scene or, I don't know, punctuate in the middle of the scene. And David Ruderman, who performs Cookie Monster, who's been with the Muppets since the 80s, he is great. he was like yeah like i love it do it let's do it you know on board with it found it funny found the relationship between the characters funny because like with cookie and gonger with cookie monster anyway you often need a straight man yes and gonger is not the straight man they're kind of both agents of chaos they're coming at it at the same angle so it's like who's gonna top it you know yeah cookie is so wild um but i don't know somehow it works like sometimes they can cancel each other out it sounds like they gave you a door there was a door with a crack open yeah and And you've gone, I'm going to crowbar this.

20:43Ben Hanlin: I've been through that door. Yeah, you're like, no, no, no, I'm going through this. And it was like almost that if you don't ask, you don't get mentality. I always think, like, I'll always ask because they might say no, but they might say yes. They have said yes many times. Yeah, and that is your attitude. I've seen you at work before. You've gone, I've got an idea for something. I'm going to organize a meeting with someone and pitch them an idea. Yeah, but why not? Yeah. Why not? hello this is ben and this is a short commercial break but for regular listeners you'll know it's not really a commercial break because i still haven't got any sponsors but what we can talk about very quickly this is warwick what a lovely lovely man i just feel calm listening to him and being around him and it's so nice i mentioned this brief at the beginning to be with somebody who's had this unbelievable, unrelenting passion since two or three years old and still today, 40 odd years on, they're still as passionate about it.

21:41Ben Hanlin: We don't see that very often. So even just that was quite inspiring to be around. And if you want to give him a bit of a support him and a message on Instagram, he is Warwick BP on Instagram, but Warwick not spelt like the castle, it's spelt W-A-R-R-I-C-K-B-P, Warwick Brownlow Pike. So give him a I'm sure he might appreciate a little message there. Let's as I have no sponsors, I will sponsor this myself with my own ad, because some of you might be thinking, what do I do when I'm not doing a podcast? I do a number of things but mainly I work in the corporate space and in particular the last few years I've been talking to big brands about how to create human connection because especially as a performer as we're learning on this show it's not really about always about the material or the words you're saying it's about how you connect with an audience so for me I've built a career off doing three things grabbing attention building connection and being remembered and I now get to talk to lots of lovely companies to their people to their leadership teams or sales teams or their customer experience teams and explain to them how I've done that because it is a skill you can learn and it is hugely transferable so if you've got a conference or an event coming up and you think oh that's a bit interesting go have a look at benhanley.com all the information is on there and I also do all the awards hosting and any other afternoon entertainment that you expect as a magician but the main thing I'm focusing on at the moment is the keynote speaking but anyway sales pitch over let's talk about this lovely podcast because next week I have the biggest guest we've ever had coming on i'm hinted it last week and it's basically when i started this pod i wrote a list in my head of 10 people that i would my dream list and this is someone off the dream list and i said i'll do i don't normally do this but i will at the end of this episode if you stick around to the end of the episode i will tell you who it is that you're going to be listening to next week so um don't fast forward as well come on because i will know and then because that's what happens anyway right uh so that's gonna make sure you don't miss this you've got to hit subscribe now and then you won't miss it the moment it comes out and if you are new here welcome go and have a look at some of the other conversations we did one recently actually with dominic mcgregor the co-founder of social chain completely different to this conversation but also fascinating in its own way so go and have a look at that and uh if you hit subscribe and drop me a dm as well if you are an og you've listened for a few weeks now i love hearing what your favorites are i try and respond to every dm that you send me on instagram and also if you could share this with somebody if you think do you know what who do i know that might like this conversation or these this show that's what i'm trying to achieve here if you can all whatsapp one person and we can grow this community one listener at a time it'd be so cool you know might be on a whatsapp group you might be on a facebook group whatever it is we get the word out there then i can keep doing this and it can be it can turn into something amazing anyway right that's my little sales pitch over remember i'm going to get back to the podcast now remember to stick around to the end but enjoy the rest of the episode here is warwick brownlow pike on what's the trick so you're doing all this you're in the family and then there's the sequel to the muppets movie which is muppets most wanted and you get on set there and now you are on hollywood film set you've got ricky gervais tina fey and the and all the big names the kermits the miss piggies the best in the world yeah how did that feel when you walked on that set well it's super overwhelming because i'd worked with the muppets and sesame characters before but much smaller scale yeah you know i'd work with miss piggy i did like an x factor um musical number with miss piggy and that's where i met eric who does piggy and fozzy and animal and sam the eagle and i'd worked with elmo a lot and so i think that's how i ended up on muppets most wanted because i had assisted those guys and and when they came to say came so we're going to do a movie who's here in england or in london that can do it they would be like well he he's helped us before he knows what he's doing yeah and you turned up and gave it a hundred percent i was there on time uh i gave it my all i was prepared you know i wasn't flustered by it i could i kind of could think ahead and know that they might need something to lean on or they might need the monitor over there or you know just like on it fully on it okay and then you how did it feel though the first set day on set bearing in mind where we started the story was two or three year old warwick was in london watching it on telly and now you're in it yeah so we walk in and the studios are humongous they're like insanely big kind of warehouse spaces in palmwood studios uh so just walking into palmwood studios is it's overwhelming because you're like this is the big time and then we go into the studio and there are all these chairs director chairs with our names on them and kermit green yeah so there's all the muppet performers and my name in the middle of it is it so it was the there's five muppet performers and then myself mac wilson louise gold and nigel plaskett were the uk muppet performers full-time muppet performers on the film and then there were lots of other puppeteers that came in because there's always big crowd scenes but we were there every day kind of doing all of the extra bits that needed help with and so i kind of was sat on my chair in a lime with all these fantastic performers thinking like this may be too much for me to handle you've done it though like the kids saw it yeah and he's like and you said from day one till you could talk you're like i'm gonna be a puppeteer like the muppets yeah and then you're in the muppets movie well i my chair was on that day and between dave goals who's gone zone steve whitmire who's kermit yeah and i really wanted to just take my chair and put it somewhere else because i was like okay this is way too much how did you okay let's talk about that how did you deal with you sat in a line it's kind of a slight circle but mostly a line yeah how do you deal with that environment did you feel like an imposter did you feel like you shouldn't have been there or did you go no come on war you've paid no i felt like a little bit like not that i shouldn't be there but like it was just a lot to take on you know like i wasn't confident i wasn't like so how did you find that confidence uh well just by proving that i can do it yeah you know or proving to them not proving to me proving to those guys that you know i'm here for a good reason yeah yeah i can do the things you ask me to do and when you watch them work you know when you think back to what did what have you learned from the way that they operate well when i watch dave goals who's gonzo work it's absolutely fascinating because he has been gonzo since 1976 he's been with the Henson Company since 1970.

28:17Like, you know, he's the longest running Muppet performer. It's just incredible, you know, to hear him in real...

28:25Ben Hanlin: I'm like, I'm hearing you in real life. You know, that voice. Like, I know that voice so well. You're my favourite character. And this is... I go back to you, and the reason why this is so special is because very few of us have a thing from a kid that is still going now. It's still happening. But you... That was magic to you when you were three or five. And it's complete magic to me when I watch it happening in front of my eyes in real life. Do you have a favourite character? Yeah, Gonzo is my absolute favourite. You didn't even miss a beat there. Why? What's it about Gonzo? He's just a fantastic, fully rounded character.

28:57He's well-performed. He's funny. He has such soul. If you are a fan, you can kind of just watch his life story over 50 years. You can kind of rarely do that with a puppet character. You can see actors who have a long life and their careers, but they often play different parts right whereas gonzo has been he's played charles dickens in christmas carol and stuff but he's been him for 50 years and you can see him being wild and young and then getting soulful and like he really has a whole arc so i've never asked you i've never

29:27Ben Hanlin: thought about this but and you don't have to answer this but obviously you talk about this with such passion and it's essentially it's predominantly for kids has anyone ever said come on worry stop watching these kids stop watching kids shows what are you doing grow up yeah well um i just don't answer it i mean isn't football a child's game i don't know like why is it for kids it's fun i enjoy it i love it um i like bright colors they're for kids fine yeah like it's interesting isn't it jim always wanted to sesame street is for children yeah what i see in sesame street is the is the art of the performance the technique the character building in the characters i'm not watching it to learn the alphabet yes i hope not yeah and especially like back in the old days the characters they would take chances these days you it's a bit more thought through and stuff but like in the old days they would just go okay you're doing this cow today go oh okay um so it's kind of off the cuff and it's a bit wild and a bit loose and edgy so i love all that like what are you going to do today you know well let's talk about let's what do i do is let's have a deep dive into jim henson the muppets so i obviously know about the muppets they are i think correct me if i'm wrong the biggest puppet brand in the world yeah they're on par you need to the muppets you think about disney and all these brands they're up there with them right so but what i don't know is much about jim henson so can you give me a bit of a snapshot how did jim henson come about and create this and i think it was around the 50s was it it was yeah go on so jim was doing art in college in the 50s and i think he wanted to be like an a graphic designer he had a poster business at school and stuff like that um but he was as he was growing up television was growing up television was new and young when he was young so he was fascinated by television he just wanted to work in television and uh he he took he took a puppet class like a puppet making class at school at college they had that back then and because these this tv company needed puppets for a show yeah that's the only reason why he did puppets just to be on television so his goal was for him to be on telly yeah he wasn't setting out to be a puppeteer like he even says like in an interview i don't think anybody would choose to be a puppeteer that's not something someone would choose in that life he's never met you man yeah but up until him i don't think anybody did yeah yeah you know so and then he inspired so many people so he just went in there because he wanted to work on television and that was the way he could get in he was like thinking about being a scenic person but um he did his puppets he made his puppets he did them people liked them he got a five minute show before the news and and i heard a thing about uh he was the first person really not to do puppets with legs because he was on telly he was like well yeah don't need legs before him if you would have seen puppets on television there'd be ventriloquist dummies or punch and judy style puppets hard puppets mostly and then And they'd be in a proscenium, like in a Punch-Judy box, some kind of box behind a playboard.

32:32And then Jim was like, well, I'm going to make these puppets soft. If you look at Kermit's face, he can pull so many emotions with just a small movement in his hand. Oh, yeah. So Jim was like, I'm going to make them soft. And I'm going to take all the playboards away in the proscenium. So I'm going to get the puppet close to the camera. So when he does this, you can read the emotion that he's a little bit disgruntled or something.

32:50Ben Hanlin: Right. So he was the person who brought that. And he also was the person who decided to watch the monitor. rather than just play the puppet and then walk out the door. He's like, when we perform the puppet on the camera, I'm going to watch the performance live on the monitor. Yes. So I can perfect it and perfect the lip sync. Right. And they were doing, in their show, they had a five minute show called Sam and Friends in 1955. And that was before the news. So it was an adult audience. It was like the 11 o 'clock news. It was like an adult audience. And it was very zany. There's some on YouTube, very wacky, people being blown up and stuff.

33:23um so they they were doing that for adults they weren't liking it for kids television yeah and

33:29Ben Hanlin: they were just doing it to be on television and then fast for and then fast forward so i again this is my lack of knowledge i always thought sesame street and the muppets were created by the same people but sesame street already existed and then jim henson came along and said hey sesame street i got these characters kind of plug them in sesame street was being pitched um and the guy who was kind of helping create that show said we should have puppets in this but we should only have puppets if jim henson can do them you know we shouldn't just bring in any puppet act we should only use puppets if we can use in his opinion the best which was jim so so they were just in their pilot stage and then when they added the muppets in the sesame street muppets the humans lived on Sesame Street the Muppets were in sketches when they've tested those the kids just love the puppet bits so they inserted the puppets into the street so Big Bird's on the street Oscar the Grouch is on the street right and then when you think about Jim Henson we're going to talk about the Muppet show in a bit but when you think about him what is his superpower what is his creativity he's just endless endlessly creative he has so if you look at his works like no two are the same no two characters no two projects are the same you know there's there's the dark crystal is very different from the muppet show labyrinth is so different from dark crystal the muppet show or sesame street or freckle rock the storyteller is uh greek myths and ancient european folk tales you know they're also very different and he didn't want to do the same thing again and again people want successful people to keep doing the same thing again and again and again and he was like the muppet show he did the muppet show for five years and then said i'm just going to stop doing that now i'm gonna do the next thing okay so he was constantly testing and changing and yeah constantly testing how can we push the boundaries how can we try something new and that's where he gets into creature work like labyrinth from the dark crystal i didn't realize that when it came tell me if i'm wrong here that the muppet show was turned down by everyone in america they were like we're not doing this muppet show so he went well i'm still going to do it he came to the uk and in 1976 the muppet show was made in the uk and then so that's how the muppet show got started and off the back of that the rest of the world then took notice well it became the most watched show in the world at the time did it like yeah i don't know what the stats are but like insane stats everybody watched it and then eventually i guess it moved back to america or got taken up by them they always well they always came back here to make the films yes they made the first muppet movie in the states but then after that they kept coming back to make muppet films in the uk so let's this is the thing i find quite interesting and tell me if i'm wrong here so the muppet movie jace so what do you think a Jason Segel.

36:07Ben Hanlin: Let's start there. Oh, yeah. He's fine, isn't he? Is that all? I like Forgetting Sarah Marshall. That was great. Oh, do you not like the Muppet movie? Yeah, I do like it, but it's a nostalgia fest. I loved it at the time. So here's what I heard about this, is that obviously the Muppets had fallen out of favour in the 2000s. The brand itself was owned by Disney, wasn't really doing much. Yeah, it's hard to keep momentum up, isn't it? Yeah. For 50 years, or 70 years, the Muppets have been going since 55 like it's hard to keep momentum up over all those years yeah and for people to keep putting them on telly where they go let's do something new so so this franchise's brand was dying jason siegel did forget and sarah marshall he'd actually written he loved puppets a dracula musical yeah out muppets and puppets um that played in set forget sarah marshall and then he said he went to disney with his writing partner and said can we revive the muppets which is great that's fantastic yeah but as a muppets fan are you you're not thinking that's the best thing ever because it's yeah no no i'm not downer on it um i just think in the in the in the movies in the muppet movies that one is obviously made to bring the muppets back yes it's clearly made to reintroduce the muppets to everybody yes um so like in the great muppet caper it's a it's a dual heist you know treasure island is is what it is christmas carol is what it is the original muppet movie is them all getting together in the first place muppets most wanted is a wacky kind of yes so it just it doesn't appeal to me the way those films appeal to me but i still like to watch it because it is a hit of nostalgia you get all the things you need from it's a muppet show movie so you've spoken a lot about puppets and muppets but one thing we haven't mentioned and i'm just conscious of time so we relatively quick here but your brain is always thinking yeah and i know that you were telling me off camera that you're thinking about pitching other shows yeah how How do, just quickly, how do these ideas start?

38:03Ben Hanlin: Where does an idea come from? And then where do you think some of these ideas might end up? Well, I should mention Dodge's Pup School then. Yes. Because that starts with Dodge. And really the idea comes from my daughter coming home and saying, oh, this happened today at school. This happened. They didn't serve cheese sandwiches at lunchtime. You know, everything's massive in a kid's world. So I was like, well, that's great. That's perfect. Like all those stories are so good and so easy, aren't they? So let's apply it to Dodge and his classroom of pup friends. Right. So then I slowly start introducing other dogs, like this dog here.

38:36And I work on it internally. I get some puppets made. I show people. I'm like, wouldn't this be fun if all these guys did something together?

38:44Ben Hanlin: Yeah. And I start sowing the seed. This is the way I do it. I start sowing the seed and testing it out. And then I start writing episode ideas. Right. But I'm always, I'm doing all of it. When we make the show, when the show gets commissioned and we make it, there's 150 people on it or something i don't know but initially i'm drawing what the school looks like i'm i'm writing about the characters and who they are and why they're friends with him why they're not friends with him but you know what's really interesting we had a last a last guest that we were talking about comedy coaching and he said comedy comes from truth and uh authenticity yeah but the kernel of everything you've just said there came from a truth of your daughter going yeah it's a big deal when they don't serve cheese sandwiches yeah yeah yeah and also in the characters when i cast all those puppeteers and the roles and dodgers pop school and i was like i want them to be true characters they're not silly they're not novelty characters they're all true so like dig deep think of where they come from you know yeah why is he a little bit snarky why is she a little bit um just like head in the clouds you know well let's talk so that's obviously dodgers pop school cookie monsters foodie truck which is what i pitched to Sesame Street after the Furchester finished as a Furchester spin-off of Cooking Gone Around a Foodie Truck, which became part of Sesame Street.

40:01Ben Hanlin: So again, this is you all over, right? You've finished Furchester, you've done a good job, and then you've gone into them and gone, I've got another idea for you. So you pitched that as a show, and then eventually that ended up being an item in Sesame Street. Yeah, so it's like a five-minute segment of Sesame Street, which is made up of Sesame Street is made up of segments Elmo's World, Cooking Monsters Foodie Truck, a song about the number two, a song about the letter A. So when kids all over the world are watching sesame street and that that foodie truck comes up that's your idea yeah and so it's on netflix all over the world now do you mind me asking you'd have to go into detail but you know i'm going to ask it when you sell a segment into sesame street and that's on netflix on all over the world how does somebody get paid for that segment well you get paid for performing it yeah in it you get paid for writing it if you write it um which i did both of those things uh and then you get paid for the idea the format basically you the format gets bought so somebody else then owns the format or sometimes i think you know the format wouldn't get bought and you were like in a game show maybe i think you could retain the rights to the format yeah i'm not in the game show world and and back in the day when you know when things were being watched by 100 millions of people or whatever this would be like life-changing oh well they are watched by hundreds of millions of people on youtube but it's not life-changing anymore It's not, yeah, like if it was in the 80s or the 70s, I'd be like sitting by the pool.

41:20You'd be sat here with a big cigar going,

41:22Ben Hanlin: this is me, kid. It's just not that. It's just not. You must love it. You have to love it to keep doing it. Exactly. Because it's tough. It's tough like doing magic is, right? Not everybody wants it. So you've got to love it because there's times when nobody wants it. And your love of it needs to see you through. Have you ever had a time where you've gone, I might need to think about a plan B here or not. Have you been lucky enough? I don't have plan B. Well, I don't have plan Bs because I think of myself as a lazy person. No, I would never call you that. Although I'm so proactive. But I think inside me there is a lazy person somewhere.

42:01So I think if I had a plan B, that little person inside would go, mate, plan B time.

42:07Ben Hanlin: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's go and do something else. So, yeah, I don't really have a plan B. I just have to make this work. Great. we're going to move on to our fast five yeah so final five questions i'm going to start with the film highlander which did not use any puppets i believe um and in the film highlander when they kill another immortal they steal their skills and expertise yeah if you could skill steal the skills and expertise of anyone on the planet i'm even going to say dead or alive yeah who would it be is this well like you would think it would be jim henson yes i suppose but um i feel like i've taken on so many of Jim's skills.

42:44I've studied, I've learned, I've inherited, I'm not related, I never met him. I died when I was five, but I've inherited lots of his work ethic. I work so hard, and I know that he works so hard, and trying to make things as best you can, and putting good things out. So you think I would say that, but actually I'd say Dolly Parton.

43:01Ben Hanlin: What? Why Dolly Parton? Well, I'd love to play a musical instrument. Puppets are kind of like musical instruments. Yeah, there's a skill to it. I'd love to play a musical instrument. I'd love to be able to write songs like she does but she is the best entrepreneur she's the best entrepreneur in the world i think and she just does good all the time she's always doing secret good things for people um right second question is uh time capsule if you could keep one thing you've ever made it could be a project it could be a character and that stays in the time capsule and everything else that you've ever done is evaporated what would it be it could be one of our sketches on cbbs it could be one of it's not is it well I think you know like when you do those sketches you delete them from your brain pretty quickly because you have to do so many like you can't keep them on your mind but well I mean it should be Dodger's Pop School but it might be the Sesame Street 50th anniversary special because I just couldn't believe that I was part of that you know such a big special all of the old people not old all the original people came back all the big characters were there Kermit the Frog I got to say hi Kermit bye Kermit as my character you know So Patti LaBelle was there.

44:09I love Patti LaBelle. It was insane.

44:11Ben Hanlin: It would be like me and you, I think you're not into sport. I'm not really into sport. It'd be like if you were the biggest England fan and you're sitting having dinner with the 1966 World Cup winners. Or playing the game with them. Like, you know, like I was in amongst it. I was part of the storyline. I was like there as a part of it. Yeah, or if you're into music, you're into the Rolling Stones. It's like being on stage and jamming with them. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Completely, yeah. It's that much passion, which is great. right okay that's in there next thing culture vulture what is the thing that you've seen watched heard experienced lately that you want to shout about um well i there's not new things okay but like i've been watching this joni mitchell interview which is on youtube and it's uh it's with the cbc the canadian broadcaster yeah from like 10 years ago or something and i just think she's really wise yeah just like it's like an hour and a half long and i just get mesmerized by it right i couldn't even tell you what she says but she says things i'm like oh yeah how about thinking about things from that perspective you know just a different way of thinking mitchell interview on what yeah on the cbc which is the canadian broadcasting corporation it's a radio interview but there's a video on youtube okay i'm going to check that out on the way home uh and fourth one i'm going to give you my magic wand warwick and with that magic wand you have the power to make anything vanish from the world of we can say puppetry or tv if you like uh what would it be well puppetry would be um people doing like puppets just for the quick laugh how do you mean like sometimes you'll just have a silly puppet in a thing in a tv show for a quick laugh but it kind of damages puppetry as a whole what because do you mean because the performer isn't into it or it often won't be a performer you know they'll just say oh somebody come and do this thing yeah it won't turn out very well and then people watch that and go oh yeah puppets aren't very good are they they're not legitimate they're not they're not actors they're not good for humor so we won't have that in other shows so then it kind of damages the thing that happens with magic if you have a bad magic show or something on telly that doesn't work with magic everyone goes well magic just doesn't work where like if there's a cartoon if there's a bad cartoon they're still going to make 50 000 cartoons this year yeah yeah yeah 50 000 dramas this year but with these niche things they kind of can get damaged quite easily i think yeah fine well in that case puppet uh bad puppetry is banned it's vanished from this world or puppetry that's not respected fine yeah fine it's gone and then my final question where i end every episode the same question it's been a great chat and it's been amazing to hear your story so if somebody was to ask you what is the trick to making a career out of being a puppeteer what would you say is well um perseverance which is what i think i i always persevere you know it's keep going keep going keep going even if it fails try again keep trying keep trying and honing your skills always honing your skills keeping your skills as as sharp as they can be there i think great thanks for it thanks so there we go that was warwick brownlow pike professional puppeteer absolutely living his dream and i just think it's a lovely conversation just to be as i said surrounded by someone with passion but the thing i suppose i take from that is having worked with warwick every day and see him operate he's not just passionate and good at what he loves he's always looking around and i would say he's 50 passion and skill and 50 hustler and i think we even alluded to this that you know if there's a door that's slightly opened career-wise he'll find a way of getting himself in there.

47:46Ben Hanlin: And he even said to me off camera that him and his mom when he was a kid would send letters to the Jim Henson company every single week until they eventually replied. He's just got that kind of mindset that if you don't ask, you don't get. And I share that. I love that energy about him as well. So anyway, that was Warwick. Right. Let me tell you then who the big guest is next week. So make sure you hit subscribe because I can announce that next week's guest here on this podcast is derren brown how amazing is that as i record this uh this week we have recorded the episode in birmingham whilst he was here for his tour a week or so ago and it's a corker of an episode i'm not going to say too much but you know he's an absolute inspiration to me he's definitely influenced my career and the way i think about performance and showmanship we get into it all i'm not i can't say too much but basically subscribe you won't miss it and remember to tell some people before now and then get people up to speed and share this out and hopefully next week you'll be listening to the fabulous derren brown here on what's the trick i'll see you next friday