Francis Coudrill

Coudrill appeared on the 1950s BBC children's television show Whirligig, broadcast live from Lime Grove Studios.

Hank Rides Again involved puppetry (for the studio introductions to each episode), drawings, cut-out animations, several distinct voices (including that of the horse Silver King, who was something like Disney’s Goofy) and sound effects – all supplied by Francis Coudrill, who made a personal appearance in a check shirt each week with Hank as his ventriloquist’s dummy.

The end of each episode, a back view of Hank riding off into the sunset and descending below the horizon line, is still etched in my memory.

Okay, some of the characters were 1950s stereotypes – Mexican Pete the bad bandit, Dirty Face the Indian Chief – but they were harmless and good-hearted ones.

Francis Coudrill lives on, for all those of us who are about to be eligible for our bus passes and who remember sitting in cramped front rooms dreaming of wide open spaces and listening to tall stories which grew taller in the telling.Coudrill's artistic base in St Ives was The Mermaid Studio at 21 Fish Street, a former lemonade factory owned by the Tucker family and known locally as the 'Pop Factory'.