The Laurey family had long been making beautiful marionettes when Joy, her mother and her sister were recruited by E.N.S.A. Her great grandfather was Sam Laurey, a Drury Lane clown who had been apprenticed to the young Joseph Grimaldi. Laurey had impeccable credentials for making the marionette. Michael Westmore entrusted the realisation of Turnip to the young puppeteer and puppet-maker Joy Laurey, who operated him for the six years he appeared on Whirligig. In fact so effective were Lestocq and Turnip as a team, that the method pioneered by them became the standard practice for presenting puppets on TV. to the viewers… was chosen to be the presenter. Richard Henry created detailed miniature sets, and Humphrey Lestocq… H. Peter Hawkins would be the voice of the new character… as he later would provide voices for the puppets Bill and Ben the Flowerpot Men… and Peter Ling was engaged to write the scripts. A creative team was assembled to make good the deficit. Annette Mills fronted the Muffin sequences, playing the piano and singing songs, but the mule remained voiceless, which was proving restrictive in terms of the scripts. Muffin the Mule was already appearing in the series, but Westmore wanted a marionette that could play alternate weeks with Muffin. Mr Turnip was the brain-child of the BBC producer Michael Westmore, who in 1950 was looking for a new puppet character for the children’s magazine programme Whirligig.
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