Z

Zebedee
In The Magic Roundabout Zebedee was the one with the big black moustache and a spring instead of legs. At the end of the programme he would appear with a 'dyyyyong' noise and say "Time for Bed". Whether or not this had a sexual connotation is not certain. Zebedee could well have been addressing this to Florence, but it's hard to see how he could hope for any sort of realistic sexual relationship when he had a spring instead of legs. Possibly theirs was a non-penetrative relationship. Or maybe Zebedee was a New Man and had decided to have a contraceptive coil fitted to him rather than Florence.

Zebra
Looks like a horse, but it has black-and-white stripes, which help it camouflage itself in the green-and-brown veldts of central Africa. Living proof that evolution sometimes really cocks it up.


A cunningly disguised Shergar enjoying
his new life in Kenya

Zenda
No idea where it is, but there's a prison there, presumably.

Zoo
Zoos were invented in the days before David Attenborough, and this accounts for both their political and emotional unacceptability, and the fact that they're generally tawdry and horrible. The fact is that, if you want to see hippos copulating or three-toed sloths demonstrating how they lick between their toes, you can buy a video of Life on Earth. What there is no point in doing is going and peering through some rusty wire fence at a hut and a pile of straw while your parents say, 'It's inside at the moment, It'll come out in the minute.'
The impact of TV on zoos has meant that most zoos have had to turn themselves into a theme park with some animals in it. Chessington Zoo is now called Chessington World of Adventures largely because kids in the 1990s were more interested in travelling on a monorail than watching a giraffe having a shit. All you ever saw as you went round the zoo, was dilating anuses and globs of smelly brown matter hitting the concrete. This also meant that zoos smelt of poo. And this is another reason why it's better to see animals on telly - because you don't have to smell their poo.
Of course, one interesting thing that could happen at the zoo would be that you might see a male animal with an erection, and this was good for embarrassing your parents with. It was always a good laugh to have to watch the elephant wandering around with an enormous stiffy, while mum and dad hurriedly decided it was time for ice cream.

Email: marywhitehouse@hotmail.com