[1] Cartoon Network UK's sister pre-school channel Cartoonito premiered Pip Ahoy!

Pip Ahoy originated as The Salties around 1995, while the creator was reading bedtime stories to his boys James and Freddie, during his annual holiday to Salcombe.

Assisted by his wife Katie, he recorded the stories in a small red book, in the hope that they would be published one day.

Ward and Francis pitched The Salties to many Animation Studios such as HiT Entertainment only to see rejection, but sometime in 2011 Ward received a call from Francis to say that he’d just had met someone while attending Kidscreen in New York who thought Cosgrove Hall might be interested and in around February 2011, France and Charles meet the Cosgrove team at the premises of 422 TV in Manchester.

Mark Hall explained that he felt we should keep “Captain’ (now called ‘Skipper’) was a grandfather type character and would become the narrator of the stories.