The Wombles were a British novelty pop group, featuring musicians dressed as the characters from the children's TV show The Wombles , which in turn was based on the children's book series by Elisabeth Beresford.
Songwriter and record producer Mike Batt wrote and also performed many commercially successful singles and albums as 'The Wombles', including the TV series' theme tune. In , the band played at The Glastonbury Festival. Filmfair acquired the television rights to The Wombles and commissioned Batt to write the theme song. He waived the flat fee for writing a single song and instead secured the rights to write songs under the name 'The Wombles'.
The band released several albums and singles. All four studio albums went gold , [ 2 ] and four of the singles reached the Top 10 in the UK Singles Chart. A song called "Wombling U. Consequently, when the single charted, the "band" were invited to perform on Top of the Pops. Additional Womble suits of the other main characters were hastily made for the live performance.
When appearing as a band, the Wombles were always played by experienced musicians dressed in full costume.
Batt continued to perform as Orinoco, regularly accompanied by drummer Clem Cattini dressed as Bungo and guitarist Chris Spedding dressed as Wellington. Both had previously recorded with Batt. On one edition of Top of the Pops , the costumes were filled by members of Steeleye Span. Tim and Andy Renton, who had worked with Batt in the latter incarnation of Hapshash and the Coloured Coat also donned the costumes, along with Robin Le Mesurier , who was later expelled from the band following his arrest for possession of cannabis.
