Ed and Zed!

1970

The Ed and Zed Show was a BBC children's television programme which ran briefly around 1970. It was presented by the disc jockey Ed Stewart, nicknamed "Stewpot", and was co-hosted by Zed, the "rebel robot". Zed was often cheeky to the sometimes bad-tempered Stewart. This programme is now of very minor significance, except for one point. While the theme of robots rebelling against their masters is a common one in culture, this is quite possibly the only case where the audience were supposed to be on the robot's side. One feature of the robot was that at the end of every show except the last, he would overload himself by going into hysteric laughter causing smoke to billow out of his back.