Benita Collings, a presenter on ABC TV's Play School for 30 years, recalls several memorable moments, many of them involving her co-host, John Hamblin. In one episode, Collings - pretending to be a house - was standing with her arms raised like a roof. ''John was saying, 'This is a nice strong house,''' she says. ''He walked in front of me, talking about the windows and so on. ''Then he went behind me and said, 'Lovely rear entrance,' and kept going. ''He could do that. The adults would get it and fall about, the kids would just think, 'Oh yeah, lovely rear access.''' In another episode, she and Hamblin were explaining how to make lunch. Collings laid a tablecloth, on which she placed a plate and knife.

Watching this quietly, he asked: ''I suppose a fork's out of the question?'' ''The interesting thing about John was he was totally committed to the show,'' Collings says. ''He was not sending it up. That was his sense of humour. The kids adored him and so did the adults - just for different reasons. He was the only one who worked on two levels.'' Henrietta Clark, a producer and executive producer of Play School for 31 years, remembers a goat incident. ''It was meant to be a billy goat because we were telling the story Three Billy Goats Gruff,'' she says. ''We were then going to sing, 'There was an old man called Michael Finnigan/He grew whiskers on his chinigin' … obviously the billy goat would have a beard. ''The billy goat arrives at 8 o'clock in the morning. No beard. What do we do? The whole script's about the goat having a beard. So we send it around to make-up and they add a beard.

''The goat performed beautifully until the end of the take when it was fed. It was then that the poor animal started eating its beard.'' Clark also recalls Hamblin and fellow presenter Monica Trapaga working at a live Play School concert. ''Monica, that day, had the most appalling migraine,'' she says. ''She knew she couldn't get off stage. They had a sequence with 'Polly put the kettle on, Susie takes it off again', where Monica was Polly and John was Susie and they were pulling and pushing this kettle. ''Suddenly Monica seizes the kettle, runs off stage, pulls off her microphone, vomits into the kettle, runs back on stage and they continue. ''John never knew the kettle was full of something he would rather not smell.''

Children's TV producer Helena Harris vividly recalls a wild ending to a live ABC concert at Parramatta Park in 1992 featuring the Bananas in Pyjamas. Harris, who created the children's show and produced it for three years, was chaperoning B1 and B2 on the day. ''It was belting with rain but also really humid,'' she says. ''[Thousands of] people had turned up to see the Bananas perform on stage and we had the actors inside those amazing suits. The heads, which took the actors up to about eight foot six [260 centimetres], were made from fibreglass and incredibly heavy. They couldn't really see, hear or feel anything in them.'' After finishing the highly physical show, B1 and B2 left the stage. But, with no security in place, thousands of children followed them. ''They were all desperate to meet and touch a Banana,'' she says. ''The actors couldn't take off their heads in front of them but we had nowhere to go.''

After being chased around the park, B1 and B2 finally escaped into a little caravan. ''They finally pulled off these heads and, honestly, huge clouds of steam came out,'' she says. Harris remembers an onscreen episode involving the Bananas sitting very close together on one end of a see-saw. ''The post-sync sound that never made it to air - thank god - we could have put on some sort of porn channel,'' she says. One show that did embrace the possibilities of risque double entendre was the British series Rainbow, which ran from 1972 to 1992. In 1979, a special three-minute episode was made for the Thames TV staff Christmas tape. Becoming famous after being aired on another program 18 years later, it featured the show's cast and puppet characters spouting extraordinary innuendo. ''Let's sing that plucking song again,'' George, a shy pink hippo, says.

''Oh yes,'' Bungle, a brown furry bear replies. ''And then Rod and Roger could get their instruments out. And Jane's got two lovely maracas.'' And so on. Agro's Cartoon Connection, an early-morning children's show that aired from 1989-97 on Channel Seven, was rife with ribald humour. Agro Vation, a puppet voiced and performed by Jamie Dunn, cheekily taunted most of his co-presenters. When a viewer requested that he and co-host Terasa Livingstone kiss, he objected: ''There's plaque. Breath.'' Livingstone demurred but Agro continued: ''Yeah, well, what about the shaving rash on your chin?'' Inspector Rex, the Austrian-made police drama, often inspired young viewers to call SBS asking to speak with the German shepherd. And, until 2003, a publicity department employee, Gregg Russell, helped out by barking into the receiver.

One Play School presenter, who asked to remain anonymous, recalls hearing a story about Noni Hazlehurst working with live goldfish. ''Everything went fine in the rehearsal but when she went to film it, she realised one of the fish had died and was floating on top of the water,'' she says. ''She couldn't stop so - I don't know if this is 100 per cent true - she swished the water around and said, 'Can you see the fish?' as it moved around in the water.'' Of all of these stories, perhaps the most salacious is a rumour about the Bananas in Pyjamas theme song. Originally performed on Play School in 1967, it was written by Carey Blyton, a nephew of children's author Enid Blyton. ''Rumour has it,'' Harris says, ''that bananas in pyjamas are early-morning erections. But it is just a rumour.''