Fat Cat doll

First appearing on television in 1972, Fat Cat and Friends was a popular 30-minute children’s program in the 1970s and '80s. It aired first on Network Ten and then on the Seven Network from 1987. The existence of merchandise like this plush toy from 1986 shows how beloved the character was by children at the time.

While he looks like a fairly placid puss, Fat Cat was the centre of a controversy that ultimately brought down the Children's Program Committee of the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal. The Committee was responsible for issuing the ‘P’ licence certifying that shows were suitable for a pre-school audience. In 1991, they withheld Fat Cat’s P certification and instead recommended that the program become more ’educational’. They also declared that the character was ‘not clearly defined and might confuse the young’. It has been inferred that the Committee’s confusion stemmed from Fat Cat’s purportedly ambiguous gender and from his muteness – notwithstanding that Humphrey B Bear had been strutting his mute, ambivalent stuff on air since the mid-1960s. Rather than take up the recommendations, Seven cancelled the show and replaced it with a different P-friendly program, sparking outrage on talkback radio and even a segment on the rival Nine Network’s A Current Affair. 

Fat Cat’s agent didn’t miss a beat, finding the newly notorious feline new gigs on the Adelaide-produced Wheel of Fortune, sketch comedy show Full Frontal and as mascot for Seven Perth’s telethon fundraiser. To this day, he appears at 7.30 pm each night on Perth television to say good night to younger viewers. 

The 50th anniversary of Fat Cat’s TV debut was commemorated in October 2021 with a birthday reception on the steps of Parliament House in Perth. Nine lives, indeed.