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It’s Mallett's pallet now!

Jennifer Williams
23/ 1/2008

ANYONE who was at school - or had children of school age - during the late 1980s will have vivid memories of Timmy Mallett.

In fact even if you weren’t, you may yet remember that itsy-bitsy-teeny-weeny-yellow-polka-dot-bikini song, although you might have been trying to forget.

But what most people don’t know is that Mallett, famous for wielding that pink blow-up hammer, is from Stockport - or that these days he is a successful portrait painter, and more besides.

The zany TV presenter was born and raised in Marple, and attended nearby Rose Hill Primary.

Later he would cut his teeth on Manchester’s Piccadilly Radio, eventually moving on to TV-AM show Wac-aday.

Timmy spent seven years on Wac-aday challenging the nation’s children to hype it up.

But it turns out Timmy had other tricks up his sleeve. Last year saw his first international art exhibition, in France, and later this year his paintings are coming to Britain.

And he attributes his love of art directly to the Stockport scenery. "We grew up in Marple," he says, "so there were lots of opportunities for painting, along the canal and so on.

"There were beautiful views - it was a stunning place to live and that got me into painting. It’s lovely to come back to it, and I do at every opportunity."

But inevitably, the kids that sat transfixed in 1989 are now grown up and looking for their next nostalgia fix, 25 years after breakfast TV began.

"It’s an interesting thing," he muses. "I think when you hold something dear as a youngster you take it with you throughout your life.

"I’m doing a lot of touring - I do a Timmy show, which is a lot of fun, as you can imagine."

And it turns out there were hidden depths to Wac-aday - a show that actually put Timmy and "Mallet’s Mallet - on the front line of international events.

"I’d forgotten that in doing our travel features we’d done some quite interesting stuff - I was there when the Berlin Wall came down."

Timmy Mallett: portrait artist, travel journalist, proud citizen of Stockport - who would have thought?

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