Muffin the Mule

Muffin the Mule was one of the earliest BBC television shows. It was broadcast at least in 1953, near the time of Elizabeth II's coronation. It involved a human hostess speaking and singing to a puppet mule. (TV: The Idiot's Lantern)

A bored Ace turned on the television in Mrs Smith's boarding house in 1963 and found Muffin on. She didn't know what it was and was unimpressed ("a woman with a posh accent thick enough to insulate cavity walls who played a piano while a wooden donkey jerked up and down"). (PROSE: Remembrance of the Daleks)

The Twelfth Doctor compared Muffin the Mule not actually being inside one's television to a monster he encountered not literally being trapped within a cassette tape. (AUDIO: Dead Media)

Behind the scenes

 * In the real world, Muffin the Mule was recorded in Lime Grove Studios, Doctor Who's first studio home. (BBC DVD: The Curse of Peladon)
 * The skit The Pitch of Fear opens with Muffin trotting out of Mr Borusa's office, apparently upset the BBC has no more work for him.
 * The show ended in 1955 after ' death and was then repeated briefly on ITV; it likely wouldn't have been on repeat in 1963 but served as a shorthand for old children's TV for the 1990 Remembrance readers.
 * When the first issue of TV Comic was published in 1951, it featured the first page of the Muffin the Mule comic on the cover with art done by Neville Main, who would be the first artist of the magazine's Doctor Who comic.