Although the series is recognisably set in the modern day, with aeroplanes and electricity, the island is seemingly unknown to man.

Various pieces of man-made detritus, such as household appliances, foodstuffs and furniture, regularly wash up on the island, and often play a central role in episode plots.

Elvis resembles a cross between a penguin and a blue-footed booby, though has a long flexible tongue; it is never made clear exactly what species he is (indeed he seems not to know himself).

Bill - The rather vain and slightly camp dodo who owns and operates the Loose Juice Bar on the island, where he creates popular (but odd) cocktails.

Astra - A scatological and eccentric female dodo who speaks with an upper-class English accent and lives in the uppermost cave on the island (accessible by a lift seen in the title-sequence).

For all her scholarly airs, she is not very intelligent, and generally misidentifies the things she discovers, thinking for example, that a clothes horse is a skeleton, and that a rubber duck is alive.

They rarely play an important role in stories, but are vital to the island's smooth (as much as this is possible) operation, as they provide power to the various appliances by running in devices which resemble large hamster wheels.