As the conversation turned to Matt’s TV series and Nicola’s book, host Lorraine Kelly quizzed the couple on how they first met.
With a cheeky grin, she asked: “Now, you two met when you were babies, right? Teenagers. Nicola, were you into farming? Were you a farm girl?”
“No, I wasn’t a farm girl,” Nicola replied warmly. “I loved being outdoors. I loved just the outdoor life. But farming was something that came to me when we met.”
Lorraine then turned her attention to how the couple copes with prolonged time apart, particularly when Matt heads off to film Countryfile and other projects. She probed: “Obviously, you know, you go off and do your own thing writing the books, and you go off and do your own thing around Britain,” reports the Express.
She continued thoughtfully: “So there are times when you’re apart, but you don’t think sometimes that works. It just does. You know, you’ve always got something to talk about.”
“We are such do-ers, really,” Matt chipped in, adding: “We are so supportive of what each other wants to do.”
He concluded: “But yeah, we’ve just sort of found our way through because we sort of focus on what we’re passionate about.” Nicola offered her take on their situation: “And then we make the most of the time when we have together, you sort of prioritise that and make the most of that.”
When Matt isn’t busy filming, he often keeps his Instagram followers updated with his day-to-day life. In one of his most recent posts, the Countryfile presenter shared the heartbreaking news that his dog had died.
He wrote alongside the post: “It’s with a very heavy heart that I’m letting you know our wonderful Bob is no longer with us.
“He’s been gone a while, but I haven’t been able to talk about it as I’ve been finding it so incredibly sad. Bob was a brilliant dog. He was there for me with his gentle soul as the ultimate companion through some of the greatest chapters of my life, from raising our kids to all the changes we made on our family farm.”
He continued, “It’s broken my heart, but I feel hugely grateful to have had him in our lives, and I thank him from the bottom of my heart for everything he’s taught me and brought to our family.
“I’m sure all you dog lovers will agree the reason we love our dogs so much is because the only time they break our hearts is when they leave us. RIP Bob X.”
Lorraine airs weekdays at 9.30am on ITV and Countryfile airs on Sunday on BBC One.
The Bob Baker Marionette Theater was about to debut its first new production in 45 years, and it was uncertain whether one of the show’s signature new puppets would even work. A pelican, with an oversized bucket-like beak, was in need of last-minute maintenance.
This gangly bird, designed to hop, skip, soar and sing to Clarence Henry’s mid-’50s rhythm and blues hit “Ain’t Got No Home,” was supposed to surprise the audience, as its elongated bill is actually hiding a frog. Getting the pelican-frog duo to perform in unison was a feat of mechanical artistry for the team, not to mention the choreography needed by the puppeteer.
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And in the minutes before showtime, director Alex Evans was trying to stay calm. In such moments, he would say later, he only need remind himself of an old adage in the puppet arts.
“Puppets,” he says, “break all the time.”
With that, he was ready to embrace the unknown.
“I always say I love the chaos of live theater,” Evans says. “We got to believe in this thing.”
“Choo Choo Revue,” the latest in a long line of song-and-dance productions, is arriving at a momentous time for the Bob Baker Marionette Theater. Just last month the troupe announced its intent to purchase its venue on Highland Park’s York Boulevard for $5 million, doing so as it was gearing up for performances at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The latter went viral, a fact Evans attributes to many of the first week shows of “Choo Choo Revue” selling out.
An organist plays while people file into the premiere of “Choo Choo Revue” at the Bob Baker Marionette Theater.
In many ways, “Choo Choo Revue” is a statement piece. Evans, who also serves as co-executive director with Mary Fagot, wants to place the spotlight on the theater’s current crop of artists, fabricators and collaborators. While the show pays tribute in many ways to the theater’s legendary namesake founder, perhaps most notably in its use of his vintage record collection, it’s time, Evans says, for the Bob Baker Marionette Theater’s next generation to shine.
Evans was instrumental in the decision to shift the team away from the previously announced production of “Arabian Nights,” a project once spearheaded by Baker, who died in 2014. Just ahead of the arrival of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the theater had gone so far as to print an “Arabian Nights” program, and had finished sets and puppets ready to go.
“Choo Choo Revue” is the first new Bob Baker Marionette show since 1981’s “Hooray LA!”
During the forced closure, however, the team began to rethink its future. “It was a deep-breath time to do some internal thinking about who we are and what we want to prioritize,” says Evans, who joined the company in 2007 as a volunteer and became a staffer in 2009.
“The first new show in 40 years — us finishing one of Bob’s shows would have been deeply personal and meaningful, but it would have kept the narrative, internally and externally, that this was one person’s vision,” Evans says. “‘Choo Choo’ is the culmination of so many different ideas and people. It was purposefully about opening the floodgates, that Bob Baker could be more than just the person of Bob Baker.”
It wasn’t a sure thing the Bob Baker Marionette Theater would even reach this milestone. For much of the past decade — since about the death of the theater’s patriarch — the narrative surrounding the theater was one of survival.
In 2019, the Bob Baker Marionette Theater needed a lifeline. Forced out of its edge-of-downtown home of more than 55 years, the beloved troupe with its thousands of handcrafted puppets — a saucy black cat in heels, a fish out of water that can’t help but wiggle — ultimately found a new location in a Highland Park theater, where it signed a 10-year lease.
Then came the pandemic, when the theater relied heavily on community fundraising to cover its rent. California, and Hollywood in particular, has a rich puppetry tradition. Bob Baker Marionette Theater likes to refer to itself as the largest ongoing puppet theater in the U.S. The oldest puppet space in the country resides up north in Oakland at amusement park Children’s Fairyland. And in 2020, Bob Baker found it had many fans, asking at one point to raise $365,000 over the course of a year. It did so in four weeks.
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1.L Castro twirls a marionette.2.The audience gives a round of applause after the premiere of “Choo Choo Revue.”3.People stand in line for the premiere of “Choo Choo Revue” at the Bob Baker Marionette Theatre.(Carlin Stiehl/For The Times)
Old favorites, including the theater’s famed black cat marionette, make appearances in “Choo Choo Revue.”
But it was the long process of buying its home, namely the belief that it would be in Highland Park to stay, that gave the company the confidence that it could go forward with a new show. The obvious question, of course, is why it took 40 years for a completely fresh Bob Baker experience. Evans gives a long answer, pointing to numerous hurdles, be it the shift in locations, the cost of preserving its historic puppets and collection, as well as just managing priorities.
“It’s not necessarily a financial hurdle,” Evans says, noting “Choo Choo Revue” cost $300,000, with about half of that sum dedicated to the creation of new puppets and scenery.
“I think it was more about priorities,” Evans says. “Like, do we get the staff healthcare first, or do we do a new show first? So we got the staff healthcare. Or do we give the stage better lighting.”
As for how and why the team settled on “Choo Choo Revue” as its first production since 1981’s “Hooray LA!,” Evans says not to overthink it.
“It made me giggle,” he says. “It was a jumping off point to imagination. ‘Choo Choo Revue,’ by name itself, I thought to giggle.”
The show is a fantastical representation of a cross-country train trip, filled with adorable puppet trains.
A meticulously detailed log with windows, for instance, or a car that seems to balance natural, mountainous wonders on its back. They’re colorful playthings, at least until the background scenery starts depicting various locomotive styles. Puppeteers will whisk train cars out into the open, each often housing a fantastical creature — a moose, for instance, who takes a break from knitting to prance around to a rendition of the on-theme traditional blues ditty “Midnight Special.”
Behind it all are tens of thousands of hours of handcrafted proficiency. Each new puppet is a work of art. Take, for instance, a swarm of bats that seemed to glow in the dark (the creatures, created for “Choo Choo Revue,” made their debut during last year’s Halloween season).
The Bob Baker Marionette Theater created more than 100 new puppets for “Choo Choo Revue,” including a pelican hiding a frog in its beak.
Or an intricately detailed cicada band. They’re each playing tiny instruments — one a half-open sardine can, another a stringed matchbook. Their wings deserve a close inspection, as the translucent curved fixtures are inspired by stained glass windows. There are trees that ski, and train whistles with big lips and high heels, modeled after harmony group the Andrews Sisters. Wait till the latter toot off their tops, as each of the 100 new puppets is full of surprises.
“We get a bunch of different artists together, and we all brainstorm,” Evans says of the creation process. “Like, ‘Let’s all think for a second about anthropomorphizing trains.’ We did a series of sketches and showed them to each other. I honestly probably have a thousand different fascinating ideas for train movement.”
On opening night, the crowd claps along to the numbers, cheering with delight at each new piece of whimsy that rolls or soars onto the floor-level stage. And as for the showstopping pelican, the frog erupts out of its beak right on cue, a moment that indeed inspires a round of laughter and childlike awe.
As the imaginary train whisks the puppets around the country, the show manages to build anticipation just by making the crowd wonder what comes next. Say, for instance, a fluffy Sasquatch, or a crooner of a moon in pajamas singing an old-timey lullaby to all the little ones seated cross-legged on the floor.
Puppeteer Ginger Duncan twirls a marionette named Comedy.
Much of “Choo Choo Revue,” like the yawning, serenading moon, is rooted in the music of the past. That was a decision made to ensure the show feels in line with earlier Bob Baker works. Yet Evans says the team is emboldend after Coachella to start tackling more contemporary songs at its Highland Park headquarters. The crowd at the Indio festival, for instance, went wild for the puppets swooning to Ben Platt’s cover of Addison Rae’s hit tune “Diet Pepsi.”
“Honestly, if we had done Coachella last year, it would have pushed ‘Choo Choo’ further,” he says, noting he initially feared pop music could distract. “I didn’t think it could work in a way that wouldn’t throw you out of the show.”
And yet Evans doesn’t want to get ahead of himself. He nearly teared up at the end of the “Choo Choo Revue” premiere, saying the following afternoon that seeing this show come together after multiple years was second only to his 2025 wedding in terms of creating an “overwhelming feeling of pride, love and care.”
“Choo Choo Revue” culminates in a look toward the future. That’s when a sleek, silver, oversized high-speed bullet train arrives on the scene.
It can be read as a metaphor.
While the nonprofit is still seeking donor help — at the premiere, Fagot said the company now has secured $4.7 million toward its $5 million goal of buying the theater and it also hopes to raise an additional $2 million for building upgrades — its future is more secure than it has been at any time over the past decade.
At long last, the Bob Baker Marionette Theater can relax and look toward new horizons.
Evans, for instance, can’t help himself excitedly tease a potential next Bob Baker show. He says twice in the interview that the Olympics are on the troupe’s mind.
“We’ve got two years,” he says. And now the permanent home to house it.
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — Secretary of State James A. Baker III admitted Friday that he was unable to dissuade Yugoslavia’s independence-minded republics from breaking up the 73-year-old federation.
“What I heard here today has not allayed my concerns, nor will it allay the concerns of others” in the U.S. Administration and the international community, Baker said after spending almost 10 hours in meetings with federal officials and the presidents of all six constituent republics.
Slovenia has announced that it will declare independence next Wednesday and Croatia has indicated that it will follow suit.
“We think the situation is very serious,” Baker said. “We worry about history repeating itself.”
Baker was clearly alluding to the 1914 assassination of Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria in Sarajevo that touched off World War I, as well as a bloody civil war between Serbs and Croats that raged during World War II.
Speaking to reporters after talks with Prime Minister Ante Markovic, Baker called on all Yugoslavs to settle their differences peacefully without “violence or bloodshed or force.”
Although clearly directed at all contending parties, Baker’s words seemed to be especially intended as a warning against the use of military force by the federal government to prevent any of the republics from breaking away.
Markovic issued a veiled warning in a speech to the federal Parliament earlier in the day that his government might call in the army to block either Slovenia or Croatia from withdrawing from the federation.
He warned that if any republic declares unilateral independence, his government would “take measures which will secure the necessary conditions for settlement of problems democratically, through negotiations.”
The federal government has conceded that the complex Balkan nation must be restructured, but it objects to any of the republics withdrawing without the approval of the others. A fruitless series of negotiations among republic leaders broke down last month after the federal presidency collapsed when Serbian delegates refused to permit the Croatian representative to take his turn as president under the country’s unique rotation procedure.
Baker called for a resumption of the dialogue and for prompt action to fill the presidency. The presidential crisis aggravates a leadership vacuum at the federal level. Although generally supported by the international community, Markovic was not elected by the public and his economic policies have been widely ignored by the republics.
“We believe that everyone is interested in finding a way, through dialogue and negotiations, to craft a new basis of unity for Yugoslavia,” Baker said.
U.S. officials said that Washington will not take sides in the debate over restructuring the federation but will oppose strongly its breakup.
Baker said flatly that the United States would not recognize Slovenian independence if the republic goes through with its plans next week.
Slovenian President Milan Kucan yielded no ground in his meeting with Baker. He later told reporters that the republic has no intention of changing its independence timetable.
A federal government official from Slovenia, Ivo Vajgl, said that Slovenia’s Wednesday independence day is “not negotiable.”
Although the other republics might be willing to permit Slovenia to leave the federation, Serbia is adamantly opposed to Croatian independence because of the 600,000-member Serbian minority in Croatia. Moreover, relations between Serbia and Croatia have been strained for centuries, reaching their low point during World War II when more than half of the 1.7 million Yugoslavs who died were killed by other Yugoslavs.
Serbia has vowed to resist with all of its force any attempt by Croatia to leave the federation.
At least 24 people have died in ethnic violence in the last two months.
Yugoslav Foreign Minister Budimir Loncar, standing at Baker’s side, said that Yugoslavia is in “a very deep crisis, of very much concern to our old friends abroad.”
Earlier, Loncar was asked if Slovenia’s withdrawal would mark the end of Yugoslavia. He said Slovenia’s action will produce important changes “but the end of Yugoslavia, it will definitely not be.”
At the same time they are trying to head off independence movements, federal officials have sought to minimize the impact of the action.
Baker visited Belgrade immediately after a meeting of foreign ministers of the 35-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, which adopted a statement warning Yugoslavia that it risks losing international economic and political support if it breaks up.
In his talks in Yugoslavia, Baker emphasized that European leaders would ostracize independent republics. The Europeans are concerned that civil war in Yugoslavia would produce devastating consequences for its neighbors, including a probable wave of millions of refugees.
Secession of any Yugoslav republic also could rekindle ethnic animosities in other Eastern European countries such as the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Romania.
Baker said that he would confer with European leaders before deciding on his next step.
