Gus Honeybun returns: Nostalgic rabbit sparks memories and nostalgia

It has started again! I was in a rugby club at the weekend and as I was about to leave an anonymous voice drifted across the room …. ‘Look after that rabbit’.

‘Hold the Front Page’ with Nish Kumar and Josh Widdicombe has stirred up a hornet’s nest, or rather a rabbit’s burrow.

The television series which follows the highs and lows of the pair as they travel across the UK working for different local newspapers, dropped into The Moorlander and came up with the idea of relaunching the career of the legendary Gus Honeybun.

Based at Westward Television and TSW, the commercial stations, Gus was the biggest thing to happen on our local screens for a generation, if not two.

I joined him in 1986 and on day one found myself reading out birthday cards and asking for bunnyhops, magic buttons and winks!

In the latest programme they brought back the presenter Fern Britton, who relived her early 1980’s career beside the rabbit.

Why was Gus Honeybun introduced into television?

It was a fantastic idea that linked the end of children’s television and the start of the evening viewing as for some reason there was always a gap of about two minutes which needed to be filled.

Other regional ITV stations had their ‘fillers’, Puffin on Channel Television and BC the cat on Anglia.

But it was Gus that became a superstar with an almost national presence, his persona boosted by celebrity friends.

The Radio One roadshow arrived in Plymouth one year and Steve Wright gave a huge ‘shout out’ to the bunny and Terry Wogan used to call Gloria Hunniford, Gus Honeybun on his Radio 2 programme.

Way before I joined there was an incident with the military.

Gus was kidnapped by a mysterious group and vanished for some time.

He was found bound, blindfolded and gagged on the roundabout outside the studios.

No one was ever brought to trial over the incident, although the finger was pointed in the direction of a locally based seafaring military wing.

Speaking of which, at The Plymouth Navy Days, remember them, I was holding the fort reading out birthdays on the TSW publicity stand. Suddenly there was a tap on the back door and a very smart, very high-ranking naval officer, covered in gold braid, requested to meet the ‘little bunny fellow’.

He was delighted and tickled him under the chin. He also complained that I never read his birthday out, a line I have heard a thousand times. As he walked away, attracting salutes in all directions I thought… ‘A bunny fan and a man who makes decisions at NATO level… worrying.’

The birthday slot used to attract hundreds of thousands of viewers, sacks of mail arrived every day and when he appeared in public, security was brought in to get him through the crowds.

There were difficult moments on screen which brought us presenters under the spotlight, one of which was the knocking off of his head!

Not me! I had an issue one afternoon when his ‘winking ring’ jammed and it gave the appearance that he had been drinking heavily. I squirted hairspray at him on one programme and got hundreds of phone calls of complaint. This also made him quite flammable for days.

But the writing was on the wall, so called progress in television viewing was about to overtake the media world.

Gone were the days of saying… “And don’t forget to turn off your television sets.’ If you are in your thirties, yes, telly used to finish at about midnight.

Then things for Television South West came to a grinding halt in 1992, the franchise was lost so Ruth Langsford and me released the rabbit back onto Dartmoor where he had been found in 1961.

The ITV programme ‘Loose Women’ showed the clip a couple of years back to mark some sort of anniversary.

But in truth he was living in a retirement burrow in Cornwall at the Flambards amusement park.

Later he was to be resurrected and features in The Box Museum in Plymouth as part of local television and its triumphs since the sixties. On the day of the opening, I attended the ceremony with my old friend Angela Rippon… she never worked with him.

He can now be seen in a glass case glaring back at a world which is more interested in social media than simple entertainment. The gift shop does very well with bunny mascots and chocolate rabbit droppings. 

I stood there gawping at a photo of me when I was twenty-four years old in a jacket that did not fit then and certainly would not fit now. It was slightly depressing that I have become a museum artefact at the age of sixty-two but that is life.

So, thank you to Josh and Nish for bringing back so many memories.

But the recognition still raises its head every now and again. I have been spotted in Hong Kong by bunny fans and invited on board an HMS ship in Istanbul by rabbit lovers. A few years ago, I had the honour of being invited to The House of Lords. At the reception I was talking about charity fundraising and its struggle in modern day society when a member of the titled nobility suddenly exploded … ‘Gus Honeybun, that’s where I know you.’

The accuser went to ask me if it scarred me working with the rabbit, the answer was yes… physically… and had to explain. In 1987 I was sat at RAF Mount Pleasant in The Falklands having been reporting on the rebuilding of the island after the war. I was surrounded by members of The Devon and Dorset Regiment who had been ignoring me until suddenly one jabbed a finger in my direction and shouted, ‘Gus Honeybun’.

The regiment swung round and joined in the accusation which turned into a rhymical chant and pointing. In the general confusion, The RAF Regiment dog handlers on duty, who had never heard of the rabbit, thought there was trouble and dropped the lead of an Alsatian who followed the pointing fingers and pinned me to my chair, biting me in the crotch.

I then had to travel back via Ascension Island to Brize Norton, heavily sedated, cursing the name of Gus. I still have a slight scar. Bring him back? Why not, it was innocent entertainment but to all those people who did not get their birthday read out …. I am sorry.