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As the credits rolled on the Acamar Films, Brown Bag Films and Tandem Films co-production of Bing on CBeebies … how exciting to see included Language Consultant Caroline Bowen PhD CPSP! The Association would like to congratulate Dr Caroline Bowen on her involvement as a Language Consultant on the new animated Bing series (currently showing on the BBC, and soon to be enjoyed by children worldwide), and to express its gratitude to Caroline for including her CPSP post-nominals after her name in the credits. It is so exciting for SPA to have CPSP receiving international exposure. And now let’s hand over to Caroline to tell you the story in her own words …

Bing is no ordinary bunny

It was late on an Australian summer night in November 2008 when I found myself in an unanticipated telephone conversation with Bing Bunny’s people in the UK and Ireland. They had identified me as an expert in the way young children talk, and wanted help in giving Bing Bunny and his friends’ chatter an authentic ring that children and parents could relate to. I had enjoyed steady, quietly waggish Flop and our rambunctious young protagonist and his everyday ‘it’s a Bing thing’ dramas and wide-eyed discoveries since 2004, through the brilliant stories and illustrations by Ted Dewan – and the idea of Bing in his own television series was exciting. Seizing the chance to help in having Bing 3;6 (slightly older than the Bing of the books), and some new characters: Sula 3;6, Pando 3;8, Coco 5;6 and Charlie 1;2 speak as children of their ages really do, I briefed the producers and writers on typical speech and language acquisition – and from where I sat, everything went quiet. Then, from February to October 2013, near perfect drafts of the 78 scripts were delivered to me and I reviewed them for ‘language authenticity’.

I am proud to be part of Team Bing Bunny, and it was exciting to be at the launch party at BAFTA in Piccadilly on June 14, 2014 and to celebrate with the cast and crew. This unique television series is joyous, inventive and ground- breaking in its faithful portrayal of what it is like to be a pre-schooler, and for that matter, what it is like to be with a pre- schooler. The situations, and the adult and child characters’ words, emotions, behaviour and reactions all have a ring of truth – and the one constant is fun. Caroline Bowen ¹ Philip Bergkvist, Clare Bradley, Denise Cassar, Gillian Corderoy, Ted Dewan, Susan Earl, Lizzie Ennever, Helen Farrall, Gerard Foster, Tracy Hammett, Kate Henderson, Sam Hill, Jayne Kirkham, Matthew Leys, Lucy Murphy, Madeline North, Sascha Paladino, Chris Parker, Rebecca Stevens, An Vrombaut, Catherine Williams, and Crispin Wood. Dr Bowen has advised that the ABC will start broadcasting Bing in Spring 2014. For those who can’t wait, some of the 78 seven-minute episodes can be viewed here: http://www.watchbing.com/

Bing and Flop.

Apart from keeping schtum about Bing in conversation with my grandchildren who are big fans of the books, the most difficult part of this enjoyable process was that communication was one-sided. I did not interact directly with the scriptwriters¹ and had no means of knowing the effect on these creative individuals of my edits to and comments about their carefully constructed dialogue. Nonetheless, I devised a motivational 5-star rating system, reminiscent of those good behaviour star charts some adults use to keep some pre-schoolers on track, and provided feedback – with the aim of having Bing, Sula and Pando ‘be’ 3½, Coco 5½, and Charlie just 14 months.

Speak Out August 2014

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www.speechpathologyaustralia.org.au