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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Entertainment
Zara Woodcock

Antiques Roadshow guest speechless to hear huge value of original Teletubbies drawings

A guest on Antiques Roadshow Toys and Childhood was stunned after learning the value of her late husband's Teletubbies drawings.

The Christmas special featured a guest who brought in the drawings for expert Mark Hill to look at at the Museum of the Home in London.

He was looking at the original design drawings and concept art for the long-running children's show Teletubbies.

The show, which featured characters named Tinky-Winky, Dipsy, Lala and Po, first appeared on screens in 1997.

It quickly became a worldwide success and was even recently rebooted.

The woman's husband was Jonathan Hills, who sadly died in 2020 at the age of 66.

(BBC)

Mark noted: "We are looking at drawings which look like the Teletubbies but there is a slight difference in some of them.

"They are original drawings - how on earth did you come to get these?"

She explained Jonathan was the person that was asked to design some characters for a children's show. She added it was his 'legacy'.

He passed away in 2020 (BBC)
His wife had around 80 of his drawings (BBC)

"Literally hundreds of millions of children saw his work and what we are looking at here is the very start of the Teletubbies," Mark explained.

The original characters looked more like bears and the woman revealed the show was originally called Teleteddies.

When revealing the value of the drawings, Mark asked how many drawings she owned, to which she said 'about 80 of them'.

Mark thought each drawing could be worth around £1,000, with some valued even higher at £2,000.

Expert Mark Hill let the guest know the good news (BBC)

He explained the collection would be worth an insane amount of £80,000.

She was shocked and replied: "Yes, that's a lot. [Jonathan] would be so thrilled - that's great."

The 90s children's show was recently rebooted for a 26-episode season on Netflix - complete with a new set and famous narrator.

The series was recently rebooted for Netflix (Cynon Valley Leader)

Tituss Burgess of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt fame joined the four iconic main characters and the baby-faced sun in their futuristic Teletubbyland home as the show's new narrator.

The new show consists of 26 12-minute episodes for a new generation of fans to devour, following the hit series being away from our screens for four years.

The Teletubbies was created by Anne Wood and Andrew Davenport and first ran between 1997 and 2001, gaining a cult status during its time on the BBC, before returning for revival on Nickelodeon between 2015 and 2018.

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