Roland Rat

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Roland Rat (also Roland Rat Superstar) is a British television puppet character. He was created, operated and voiced by David Claridge, who had previously been behind the Mooncat puppet in the ITV children's television programme Get Up and Go!. Roland claimed to live beneath King's Cross railway station. He had an infant brother called Reggie, and a girlfriend: Glenis the Guinea Pig. His colleagues included dour Welsh technical whizz Errol the Hamster and over-enthusiastic self-appointed "number one ratfan" Kevin the Gerbil.

Roland Rat was introduced to ailing breakfast television network TV-am by Greg Dyke and was generally regarded as its saviour, being described as "the only rat to join a sinking ship". After a couple of months on TV-am, Roland took the audience from 100,000 to 1.8 million. In 1985 he transferred to the BBC where he had a number of shows through the late 1980s. In the late 1990s he reappeared on Channel 5.

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The video game

In 1985 Ocean Software produced a game called Roland's Rat Race for the Commodore 64. The player had to guide Roland through the sewers of London and collect nine pieces of a door which, when complete, would allow him to rescue his companions in time for an appearance on TV-am. Roland had to avoid enemies in the form of animated wellington boots which could be temporarily incapacitated with a squirt of glue, which could also be used to stop tube trains in order to ride on them.

The music for the game was composed by Martin Galway and has since been remixed by Jogeir Liljedahl and the C64 Revival band Press Play on Tape. The game may be downloaded for use on a C64 emulator, from the C64 unlimited website. A screenshot of the game is available from the Video Game Museum.

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Trivia

  • Roland had three UK chart hit singles including "Rat Rapping" and an LP The Cassette Of The Album between 1983 and 1985. A follow-up LP, Living Legend subsequently appeared but flopped, despite having three tracks produced by Stock Aitken Waterman. Kevin the Gerbil also had a top 50 single.
  • In 1992 David Claridge also operated "Brian the Dinosaur" on the Saturday morning children's show Parallel 9.
  • Roland made a brief return in early 2003 as a guest presenter of CiTV.[[1]]
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