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
Mario and the Magician Mario and the Magician Mario and the Magician () is a novella written by German author Thomas Mann in 1929. "Mario and the Magician" is one of Mann's most political stories. Mann openly criticizes fascism, a choice which later became one of the grounds for his exile to Switzerland following Hitler's rise to power. The magician, Cipolla, is analogous to the fascist dictators of the era with their fiery speeches and rhetoric. The story was especially timely, considering the tensions in Europe when it was written. Stalin had just seized power in Russia, Mussolini was urging Italians to recapture the