Basil Brush very aggressive Scottish hedgehog also made by Peter Firmin. In the mid-1960s Basil became a supporting act for the magician David Nixon, upstaging Nixon on the latter's BBC1 show "Nixon at Nine-Five" in 1967 and "The Nixon Line" (1967–68), to such good effect that the fox was offered his own show. Basil thus acquired his own television series on the BBC, "The Basil Brush Show", which ran for 12 years from 1968 until 1980, in which he was supported by various famous stooges: first, in 1968, by the actor Rodney Bewes, known on the show as "Mr Rodney"; next, from
Basil Brush who lived upstairs, Irish sidekick Liam (played by Michael Byers), and Anil, a crazy café owner and inept cook. Several celebrities made cameo appearances on the show. These included Eamonn Holmes and Ainsley Harriott. The original shows were recorded before a studio audience, comprising mainly children, but the new programme used a post-production laughter track instead of an audience. Interspersed with the main programme, there are now various animated shorts in which Basil and/or another character is seen making jokes. The more recent puppet looks different from the original 1960s/1970s puppet in a number of aspects and, apart from being