Come Outside

Come Outside is a British educational children's television series that ran from 23 September 1993 to 18 March 1997, presented by and starring Lynda Baron as Auntie Mabel and her dog 'Pippin'.

The starting point for each programme is something with which children may already be familiar, such as: wood, paper, boots, spiders, buses, soap and lampposts.

A feature of Come Outside is Auntie Mabel's unusual mode of transport: a small aeroplane (a Slingsby T67 Firefly) with multi-coloured polka dots.

Specially-shot footage included snails from London Zoo, frogs at Chester Zoo, geese at Folly Farm in Pembrokeshire, rabbits at Tilgate Nature Centre in West Sussex, butterflies in the Butterfly Centre, Eastbourne, hedgehogs supplied by St. Tiggywinkles Animal Hospital and spiders from a private collection.

Series 1 was set in a cottage on the corner of Denham Airfield in Buckinghamshire, and was used to provide the exterior shots of Auntie Mabel's house.

A much older plane (A 1983 Slingsby T67M Firefly registered G-SFTZ) was used, now featuring a spiralled propeller In every episode Mabel ventures outside and this involved shooting in many locations in the United Kingdom, such as a pencil factory in Keswick, the manufacture of Wellington boots in Dumfries, a pottery in Stoke, growing bulbs and attending the annual flower parade in Spalding, Lincolnshire and making brushes in Portsmouth.

It happened well outside the main production period by which time Lynda Baron was committed to other work and was not free to travel to Seville.

To make it appear that Auntie Mabel had visited the orange grove, Baron was recorded in the studio against a Chroma key background while a body double was used for reverse angle shots of her in Spain.