Harvy's House

Harvy's House was a Kuboian children's television series that aired on Bumper's Block on Saturday evenings from 1992 to 1995. A variety show, it was hosted by puppet character Harvy, a purple alien who was voiced by Roddy Graston.

Format
Harvy's House was filmed and broadcast live in front of a group of children. Hosted by Harvy the Alien, it was a variety show that featured celebrity interviews, sketches, previews of other programmes on Bumper's Block and competitions.

A segment regularly seen on the show was Harvy's Telescope, which showed a clip of the episode of a certain programme that would be playing later on Bumper's Block during that night. Occasionally, it would show multiple clips of multiple episodes if a new show was premiering on the block that night.

One of the more famous aspects of Harvy's House was a game called The Face Off, where a child in the audience would go up against an adult (usually the celebrity adult who was interviewed earlier) in a single-round question on general knowledge or children's television. Both contestants sat in a tube and had a buzzer - whoever buzzed in first answer the question. If the contestant who buzzed got the question right, the other contestant got gunged poured over them. Answering wrong meant they got gunged instead. However, the adult contestant was usually gunged even if they got the question right.

Production
When deciding on the mascot for Bumper's Block, Dominic Halls came up with a green spherical cyclops creature and a purple one. Ultimately, the green one was chosen, whilst the purple one was chosen for the character of Harvy. Unlike Bumper, who could only make alien sounds, Harvy was fully capable of human speech.

According to Harvy's voice actor Roddy Graston, Harvy's House was produced under a very tight budget, and he was given very little time to practice his lines.

Availability
After Bumper's Block was axed in 1997, TVVC junked all remaining editions they had of the show. However, some of Bumper's Block's presenters and associates were able to save some of the editions for their own personal collection.

As of 2021, only fifteen episodes of Harvy's House are known to survive in full - and one edition is not publicly accessible. There are two additional episodes that are partially available.

In other media
Roddy Graston reprised his role as Harvy during the Children's Appeal Day telethon in 2003.