There was much gnashing of teeth and hand-wringing from mums and dads across Australia when perennially popular children's show Hi-5 quietly disappeared from free-to-air TV screens a few years ago. Who would placate the wee ones while we surreptitiously stole away to make a cheeky Nescafe?
But parents, rejoice: the fluoro-panted, overenthusiastic jazz-handing fivesome is back, with a new show and a new line-up.
Hi-5 House teams fan favourites Stevie Nicholson and Lauren Brant, who last graced our screens in 2011, with newcomers Ainsley Melham, Mary Lascaris and Dayen Zheng. And, as Nicholson explains, the third incarnation of the show's line-up continues to delight.
It's been 18 months since we saw you last on our screens - what have you all been up to?
For the public, it's like, ''Oh, Hi-5 have been off the screens for a while'', but we've been flat out touring and filming the TV series. It's been pretty crazy. In the last six months of last year I think we only had a week off.
Have you been overseas?
We did an Australian tour, and straight into a tour of Asia, so Hong Kong, Manila, the Philippines and Singapore - that took us right up to New Year's Eve.
The show's popular across the world - you must get fan messages from all sorts of places …
We do. With social media now we have direct interaction with our fans, and it's unbelievable. I get messages from mums and kids saying they're sitting down in places like Malta watching the show. I'm like, ''I don't even really know where Malta is, but thank you for watching!'' It's amazing. The show is dubbed into Spanish and a lot of local languages, and Hi-5 is used as sort of an English learning tool; parents will put their kids in front of the TV so they can learn English at a young age. I find that really fascinating.
You've been with the group since 2007 and spanned a couple of different line-ups. Has the show changed?
I think it's lovely how it's evolved - we now have this great big family of five members, past and present. And I'm in almost daily contact with all of them. Which is really lovely that they are 1) so supportive, and 2) have a vested interest in how it all goes. In this new TV series, Hi-5 House, we're all living in the house together - Dayan has her kitchen, I have the rumpus room, Lauren has the bedroom … I think it makes it, if anything, a lot more accessible and a lot more tangible for a child to relate to. Previously our world was quite abstract, now it's a home. And for a child, that's something that's a familiar space, and something very welcoming.
Some of the new performers are quite young - I guess they grew up watching it too.
Yeah. It has got to that point. Ainsley, he's just turned 22, and he grew up looking up to [previous members] Nathan [Foley] and Tim [Harding]. In turn, you also have young parents who grew up with the show, and now they're able to take their kids along to a Hi-5 show and listen to the same songs they grew up on.
How long has Hi-5 been going?
The pilot was filmed in 1999, I think. It's unbelievable.
And how old are you now, Stevie?
I've just turned 30. It feels quite surreal, because my job keeps me young … it's the fountain of youth! When you're dressing up as a cow, or a merman, during the day, it's very hard to take anything seriously!
And the best bit is, it will be on the internet into perpetuity.
I know! I am really thankful for that! [laughs] I'm sure that's something that when I have kids of my own, and I'm trying to discipline them, they're going to pull up a pic of me dressed up as a merman on their iPad 20, and say, ''Dad, I can't take you seriously right now!''
Hi-5 House, weekdays, 9am, Eleven.
