Mah Nah Mah Nah

I love the Muppets. Deeply. I am mildly distrusting of anyone who isn’t a fan. My biggest regret in life is of not making a Muppet when I visited FAO Schwartz. Christmas kicks off in style when I allow myself to watch ‘A Muppet Christmas Carol’. I am reduced to tears of laughter every time
I listen to the Rowlf classic ‘You and I and George’. I am reduced to tears every time I hear ‘The Rainbow Connection’. For some years I worked in the studios where the Muppets TV show was recorded. There’s a photo on the wall of all the Muppets on bikes. Sadly I missed the recording of the show by about 25 years or so but strangely my aunt worked on the Muppet show in those very studios. When my brothers and I were little and we would visit our grandparents (my aunt’s parents) we were given old copies of Muppet scripts to draw on the back off. My aunt was given a
Rizzo the Rat when she left the show and let us play with it so we used to act out the scripts we had with Rizzo and various other toys standing in for the other characters. We’d push two armchairs together (this also made a very good slide) and lay on the floor and do puppet shows from there.
My favourite Muppet is Rowlf. By virtue of the fact that he’s hilarious, has a great voice and can play the piano. Fozzie is up there but oddly I never had a huge amount of time for Kermit. I appreciated that he had to hold the show together, attempt to get Peter Sellers on the stage whilst he was having an existential crisis, fend off Miss Piggy’s advances and play the
banjo but I never really found him as appealing as the others. Then I saw the new Muppet film yesterday and reconsidered my choice.. Kermit is the greatest leading man ever.

The film itself is amazing. Despite the fact the cinema was filled with some of the most loud bastard children I have ever heard (note to parents, if your child is still rustling a paper bag at the end of the film, you’ve bought it too many sweets. Oh and note to the girl who answered her
phone – there’s a special place in Hell for people like you), it was an hour and a half of pure joy and Kermit was at the centre of it. His relationship with new Muppet Walter and his commitment to his friends recaptured the heart of the Muppets and oh, I’ll stop trying to analyse it, it was amazing.

Being a musical helped. I’ve never really got over my own life not being constantly interrupted with song and dance numbers. As a Flight of the Concords fan I loved the music throughout the film and as a bonus I got to hear ‘Rainbow Connection’ again.
My only question now is when I can go and see it again. I’ve been told by many people that today is too soon. I disagree but will bow to external pressure.