Violet Philpott, who has died aged 90, was one of the handful of puppeteers who brought new life and language to British puppetry and children's theatre in the 1960s and 70s. Violet was active in every aspect – not just performing and organising, but also devising original plays and experimenting with new techniques and materials such as polystyrene, polythene, plastics and resins.
When the BBC found a television outlet for the surreal radio humour of The Goon Show in 1963, they needed figures to go with the voices of Peter Sellers,Harry Secombe andSpike Milligan, and Violet helped to bringThe Telegoons to life. Sellers, Secombe and Milligan pre-recorded the soundtracks for the TV show, with extra voices supplied by puppeteers. Extensively involved in making many of the puppets for the series, Violet worked on 15 episodes and voiced the Major Bloodnok and Bluebottle characters.
The rehearsals were a chaotic process, with puppeteers randomly assigned characters to perform with at speed. Believing that human warmth and energy purposefully channelled made for convincing puppetry, Violet was a distinct and different force from the Supermarionation style ofGerry Anderson, where technical gadgetry was paramount and the effect stilted and stylised.
In 1972, she found her biggest audience by creating Zippy, the know-all star with a zip for a mouth on Thames TV's preschool children's show Rainbow. Though the series continued for more than 20 years, Violet's involvement ended after the first season because of a back injury sustained through having to adopt an awkward position every time Zippy appeared through a window.
Together with Mary Jean McNeil, she produced a simple guide, The KnowHow Book of Puppets (1975), with lively illustrations aiming to show children how to produce their own puppet shows. Whenever and wherever she could, Violet toured shows and workshops, making junk puppets with children at the annual Punch and Judy festivals in St Paul's Church, Covent Garden.
Born in Kentish Town, north London, Violet was the only child of Lilian and Robert Yeomans, who divorced when she was seven. Violet spent two years living with her father, a pub entertainer and jack of all trades, but then went to live with Lilian, adopting her mother's maiden name of Phelan.
During her time at St Martin's School of Art, she discovered her metier and met her future husband, AR Philpott, better known as Pantopuck the Puppet Man, or Panto. Theosophists, vegetarians and pacifists, Violet and Panto provided a hospitable, unworldly environment for their many collaborators.
Violet sometimes performed as Boo the Clown, a persona she developed in the early 1970s. She founded the Charivari Puppets, and later the Cap and Bells Puppet theatre in 1971. Many of her live shows featured the adventures of the baby Bandicoot, an endearing marsupial with an inimitable voice, who encountered a variety of animal friends, all distinctively voiced by Violet. She toured at home and internationally, playing in Spanish, German and Esperanto. Her adaptations of The Ugly Duckling and The Elves and the Shoemaker remain in the repertoire of theLittle Angel theatre in Islington, where she was a visiting artist.
A great advocate of the therapeutic uses of puppetry, and a dedicated supporter of the Educational Puppetry Association (founded by Panto in 1943 and amalgamated with the Puppet Centre Trust in 1978), she regularly ran workshops and gave performances for disabled and disadvantaged people. The transmission of hope, confidence and fun through creativity is Violet's continuing legacy.
Her husband died in 1978.