| Hoop-dee-doo, kids love a Wiggly world HI-5 may be the new kids on the preschool TV block but it's The Wiggles who remain as big as The Beatles among the under-fives. Three years ago The Wiggles did their first US tour as the support act for Barney the Dinosaur. Two years ago this month they took their first solo tour to New York. Last month they returned from their third tour this year, having played to 250,000 people and, in a couple of cities, outsold pop prince Justin Timberlake, who was also on the road. "The American success of The Wiggles is literally unprecedented," says "fifth Wiggle" Paul Field, the group's general manager of operations and communications. "The Wiggles were the first of a kind. There was nothing like them before them." But constant touring takes a toll and the skivvy-and-slacks clad foursome, really Murray Cook (the Red Wiggle), Jeff Fatt (Purple), Anthony Field (Blue) and Greg Page (Yellow), are about at their limit. Although videos (11 million sold), CDs and live shows remain the group's core business, Field says they are now planning to do more television. The group has made surprisingly little TV, in a dozen years only three series, the first two of them self-financed. "What stopped us for the first few years was that no one really understood The Wiggles, or could see us working, and it costs a lot of money to make TV," says Field. The group's third series, Lights, Camera, Action, a co-production with the ABC, goes to air in the US on the Playhouse Disney channel next month. "That will probably do them for a good 12 months. But next year, particularly as America continues to grow, we certainly intend to produce more TV series," Field says. "That might be by ourselves, we'll just wait and see. There are so many interested parties in The Wiggles these days that it's something we can deeply consider rather than taking the first offer that comes our way." A bigger presence on the box would create one more area of competition with Hi-5. But both camps pooh-pooh any talk of rivalry. Hi-5 co-creator Helena Harris says she understands why the groups get compared, but "we couldn't be more different in music style and all that sort of stuff". However, The Wiggles camp sees more obvious similarities. Field says that in the early days of Hi-5 he even heard the group described as combining "a little bit of Wiggle and a little bit of Spice" (as in the Spice Girls). "They've certainly looked at what The Wiggles have done and seen what works and taken it in a bit of a different direction. And that's cool," he says. "To me [Hi-5 is] skewed a bit older and a bit more towards girls. And they're very fashionable, while The Wiggles is the band that fashion forgot." Both groups are expecting imitators. "When we took Hi-5 into England with the pilot I was so worried that we would get ripped off, and we still haven't. I can't imagine why," Harris says. Says Field: "Given our success in America, give it 35 seconds and they will have to start coming through any day now." Sally Jackson |