By David Flynn

An animated tv sitcom which was largely aimed at children, had a regular slot a few times on RTE in Ireland in the 1970s. The cartoon, which began in the US in 1961, had a catchy theme tune, and a humorous storyline, which was more than a little familiar to tv viewers of the time.

The animated Top Cat show is set in a group of alleys in New York City, where the main character, Top Cat is the leader of a group of troublesome cats.

The main cat, TC has the ability and mischief in him to always try to get rich, gamble, eat for free, or to play jokes on someone, despite being watched over by Officer Dibble, who is very strict and fierce with the cats of the alley. However TC is very smart and nearly always fools Dibble.

The cats names are Benny the Ball, Fancy-Fancy, Brain, Spook and Choo-Choo. The premise is very interesting because it is not only reminiscent of the 1950s sitcom, The Phil Silvers Show, also known as Sgt. Bilko but

TOP CAT would seem to be a deliberate copy of the personality of Bilko, although it doesn’t have the army barracks setting.

The Bilko and Top Cat programmes both featured a group involved in get-rich schemes, which usually fell apart once their plans went into action.

Arnold Stang, the actor voicing Top Cat deliberately mimicked the voice of Phil Silvers, but after a while, it was reported that there was objections to the similarities, and later in the season, Arnold changed his voice, albeit slightly. Yet, the cartoon characterisation of Top Cat also still resembled Silvers and the situation was interesting with the casting of Benny The Ball. He was voiced by Maurice Gosfield, who also played the loveable character, Pvt. Doberman on Sgt. Bilko.

Sgt. Bilko and Top Cat also shared a writer, Barry Blitzer, who wrote episodes of both series and in 1956 had won a Best Comedy Emmy award for Sgt. Bilko. Blitzer had also written for the other Hanna-Barbera cartoon sitcoms, The Flintstones and The Jetsons.

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