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 Underground Ernie was an animated cartoon series based around the adventures of Ernie, a
supervisor on the underground railway network.
Ernie was voiced by the former footballer Gary
Lineker.
Around the time of the show's inception, series producer Sid Rainey
(formerly of the group Compulsion) bumped into Miles in a
chance meeting and happened to discuss what he was
working on at the time. This led to
a series of discussions about The Wonder Stuff recording the
theme tune plus additional incidental music for the
series although the score was eventually credited
simply to HRB Music (Hunt, Rainey, (Martin) Bell).
Twenty-six episodes were originally recorded and broadcast
alongside the release of a range
of children's merchandise from toys and clothing to
books and magazines.
On its initial launch in June 2006, the
programme was broadcast twice daily - once on BBC2
and later on the CBeebies channel. The launch
episode centred around a pop star named Sam 7 who
had to get to his concert venue without being mobbed
by his fans.
 With
his design clearly influenced by Hunt, it was
originally anticipated that Miles would provide the
voice for the character but as Miles was not a
member of Equity (the UK trade union for performing
artists) this plan eventually had to be shelved with
the voice ultimately being provided by an existing
cast member, Chris Jarvis.
In 2008, following the huge success of the
brand (80,000 website visitors, highest weekly
viewing CBeebies figures, over 30 UK product
licenses, product sales in excess of £1m within 2
years of the show's launch), the production company
behind Underground Ernie (Joella Productions) began
considering further investment in the show with a view
to work on up to 56 further episodes. Sadly
the project was later shelved and the Ernie brand
was mothballed.
For a while, his involvement in the show
often led to Miles performing an extract of the
theme tune at his solo acoustic shows. The
released theme tune for the series also featured
Gary Lineker on vocals but a number of other tracks
and incidental music were written and recorded for
the show. A version of the theme tune with
additional verses and vocals from Vic Reeves in
place of Lineker was recorded and Reeves is also
thought to have worked on other tracks with Miles as
well as Amsterdam's Ian Prowse who also reported at
the time that he had been working on tracks with
Miles.
A one stage, it was anticipated that a full
soundtrack album to the series would be released by
the BBC but without further investment this was
something else that was never followed through to
release and remains in the archives. |
