John: CBeebies mess with Humpty Dumpty nursery rhyme

Oct 22 2009 By John Avison

HUMPTY Dumpty has been doctored. If you remember, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty together again.

Cbeebies, the BBC children’s channel, changed this last week. In their version the king’s horses and men "made Humpty happy again."

Humpty, incidentally, was not a fat cannon mounted on the walls of Colchester during the Civil War siege of 1648. That was some Oxford graduate’s spoof explanation.

There’s an outside chance Humpty was Richard III, the Wall his horse, and the nursery rhyme the story of his being ‘hacked to pieces’ at Bosworth.

That’s a far cry from a fat – sorry, circumferentially-challenged – egg falling off a wall and lots of confused military types lunging about in a giant omelette. So don’t tell the children.

This is not the first time those jolly people at Cbeebies have dumptied down nursery rhymes.

Not long ago they had Little Miss Muffet making friends with the spider instead of running away from it.

I’m thinking that this might be just the beginning for our friends in the brightly-coloured Cbeebies bunker.

What are they going to do with London Bridge falling down? Whoops.

"London Bridge has received a thorough inspection by competent architects and has now been shored up."

OK, I accept it doesn’t scan or rhyme, but someone at Cbeebies can work on the fine detail.

We would all hate children to think that this famous landmark was somehow at risk. It might make them cry.

Then, of course, there’s Jack and Jill. Silly Jack has fallen down the hill and broken his crown and silly Jill has tumbled after him. Fetch the vinegar and brown paper.

"Jack nearly tripped and Jill nearly slipped, but the Hill has since been repaired by the local authority rangers’ team to all-weather standards," is how this song should end. No tears there.

Cbeebie bods might also like to take a look at Ring A Ring of Roses in which not one but everybody falls down.