British 90s nostalgia and shite

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I'm going to watch Button Moon with my two-year-old son. This should be fine. Button Moon is perfect for young children. There's nothing scary in it.

Actually, on second thoughts, there might be one scary thing: Queenie Jelly. I don’t remember Queenie Jelly very well but my brother does. He says it’s one of the few things in his childhood that scared him. I trust my brother given that he’s essentially a clone of me.

Okay. So as long as my son and I don’t watch the Queenie Jelly episode, then everything will be fine.

I search for Button Moon on YouTube and the first result is an episode is called "Billy Goats Gruff". That’s good. That sounds like a nice episode.

A Queenie Jelly appears

We are just three minutes into the episode and OH GOD THERE IS QUEENIE JELLY.

I’m not making this up. The first Button Moon episode I pick on YouTube just happens to be the one with Queenie Jelly in it. I think I might have conjured her up accidentally, the same way you can conjure up the Candyman by saying his name five times in a mirror.

And it’s not like you can tell Queenie Jelly is in the episode from the title. The title is "Billy Goats Gruff". I expect a tale about three billy goats. Queenie Jelly shouldn't even be in this episode. She should fuck off and let the goats do their story. I suppose the goats must be somewhere in it later. If Queenie Jelly hasn’t eaten them first, that is.

I could stop the video but honestly, I’m curious to see what all the fuss about Queenie Jelly is about. So my son and I keep watching, like we're watching the VHS tape from The Ring.

But Queenie Jelly is just sitting there, inert, like a creepy doll on a mantelpiece. I know that at any moment she’s going to start moving. I just know it. I have my eye on you, you wobbly bitch. You can’t trick me.

Meanwhile, Mr Spoon is looking at some cakes. He’s like an innocent child who doesn’t know there’s a tiger about to eat him. I want to shout at the telly, to warn Mr Spoon, but I don’t think the telly works like that.

OH GOD MR SPOON WHAT ARE YOU DOING DON’T DO THAT–

Queenie Jelly is awake

Mr Spoon, the bastard knob, has woken Queenie Jelly up. That is, if she was even asleep in the first place, in which case she was sleeping with her eyes open. Like a serial killer.

Here's a thought. What's Queenie Jelly the queen of? I think she's supposed to be the queen of the dessert table or something. That’s a pretty shit title though. Makes me feel sorry for her. Almost.

Hmm, this actually isn’t so bad. I can’t see what’s so scary about it. My son is still watching. And look, there are gingerbread men. My son likes gingerbread men.

The scary part

Then the thing happens. The scary thing. It begins with Queenie Jelly saying, “Fancy having Mr Spoon for a crown when I really love... double cream!” Then a floating bowl of cream appears and a floating spoon. (I wonder if the spoon is Mr Spoon’s cousin?) The spoon proceeds to dump wallop after wallop of cream on to Queenie Jelly’s head. That’s not scary in itself though. What is disturbing is the closeup of Queenie Jelly, her only closeup of the episode, an awkward shot that goes on for too long: a shot of Queenie Jelly laughing while the spoon dumps cream on her head.

There’s something weird about the way Queenie Jelly looks and moves. It looks real and unreal at the same time.

And that laugh: a weird high-pitched laugh. Have you ever heard the Queen laugh? No. And there’s a good reason for that: people would find it terrifying.

There must be something disturbing about the scene because my son has a confused look on his face and then he says, “No more Button Moon.” He makes me turn it off. And whenever I bring up Button Moon now, he says, “Button Moon is scary.” Now I can’t watch Button Moon with my son. Thanks, Queenie Jelly, you cunt.

Other episodes with Queenie Jelly in them

Upon further investigation (by which I mean a half-hearted search on Wikipedia while I ate a Freddo), it turns out Queenie Jelly is in more episodes. There’s one called "Queenie Jelly Loses Her Cherries", where, I think, Queenie Jelly loses her virginity several times; one where Queenie Jelly "puts on a royal show for Tina" for Tina's birthday, where, I imagine, Queenie Jelly presents Tina with the skinned faces of her parents and then eats her; and one episode that’s just called "Queenie Jelly", which I guess consists of ten minutes of Queenie Jelly laughing at the screen.

It's hard to define what exactly makes Queenie Jelly so disturbing. Is it the fact that there is a pair of fucking human eyes on a jelly, eyelashes and all? Is it the way that her response to getting squirted with cream is so ecstatic that it’s almost sexual? Is it that her mouth moves and looks like the beak of an octopus? Or is it the way her face sometimes closes in on itself, like an abyss, and yet other times expands outwards as if it’s coming towards the screen? I don’t know. All I know is that I won’t be having tea with Queenie Jelly any time soon.

Killing Queenie Jelly

I have concluded that the only logical thing to do now is to kill the demon hellspawn that is Queenie Jelly.

So I went to her house and killed her.

Mr Spoon is still welcome to come see me though. He’s alright.

Button Moon is available to buy on DVD at Amazon.