Noel Edmonds – The Frog Man of My Nightmares or The cursed summer Noel Edmonds ruined our local park

Growing up in ye olde 90s, I hated Mr Blobby and I hated Noel Edmonds.

My family lived just a ten-minute drive from Bicton Park and Gardens in Devon – a genuinely lovely place we visited often. Peaceful, fun, and full of charm, with something for all the family. It’s still there, and I’d recommend it to anyone visiting the area. I promise: all trace of Noel Edmonds has been thoroughly scrubbed from the place.

But in 1996, he unleashed chaos on our beloved park.

That year, Noel Edmonds took over a section of Bicton and turned it into Gotchaland – a theme park based entirely on pranking the paying public. Yes, really.

Some of the “attractions” included:

A stick insect enclosure that was literally just a pile of sticks

Promised boat trips… with no actual boats

A wildlife park… with zero wildlife (see pile of sticks above)

And a mascot called Phibber the Lying Toad, a towering frog-suit nightmare who lied to and pranked children.

This all culminated in a court case in 1997. I dread to think what Phibber got up to, I kept my distance. I recall clinging to the back of my father's legs and crying hysterically when the massvie green weirdo loomed into distance. Frankly, it feels like his antics deserved their own court case.

As an incredibly sensitive child, I was always braced for the worst… and so I became utterly convinced that the monster within the monster was none other than Noel Edmonds himself hiding inside that terrifying toad costume, stalking the grounds and playing tricks on unsuspecting kids.

It was meant to be a three-year project. It didn’t survive the summer. Thank God.

Unique, Noel Edmonds’ media company, signed a contract with Bicton’s owners, Steve and Jenny Stevens, to develop the "attraction". After the backlash, a court case followed in 1997, where Judge Stanley Burton QC criticised Unique’s scheme as requiring the “deception of the public, or at least of children” and stated that the plans were “not reasonably fit for their purpose.”

I'm running late for work as I've gone into yet another Mr Blobby / Noel Edmond's rabbit hole.