Noname brings smiles to sick kids

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This article was published 16/02/2019 (2755 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Prepare to turn green with envy, because earlier this week I got to hang out with a major TV celebrity.

I’m talking about a little guy who is arguably the hardest-working TV star in show business, having appeared, by conservative estimate, in more than 9,000 episodes of his hugely popular show.

Despite having a legion of adoring fans that routinely write him fan letters, send him Valentine’s cards and beg him to make personal appearances, he remains a gentle, humble soul who never wastes time thinking about himself.

That’s just the way life rolls when you’re a tiny blue-and-red hand puppet with googly button eyes and a legendary passion for pizza.

His name is Noname and, unless you or your loved ones have spent time recovering in Winnipeg Children’s Hospital, chances are you’ve never heard of him.

Noname — who got his moniker from young patients in a contest decades ago — is the shining star of Children’s Hospital TV Network, a closed-circuit station that, for the past 38 years, has been broadcasting kid-friendly programming into every patient room, clinic and waiting room in the hospital.

“This station was the first in-house, non-medical TV network in Canada. The second in North America,” gushes Maria Soroka, a hospital child-life specialist who slips Noname on her right hand and brings the bubbly character to life three times a week.

For the uninitiated, Noname is the co-host, along with a volunteer human being, of CHTV’s signature program, The Good Day Show, a live, hour-long, interactive show that is broadcast Monday to Friday at 1 p.m. (a taped version is replayed at 4 p.m.) from a tiny, cluttered second-floor studio in the Children’s Hospital.

“I love it,” Soroka says of the beloved puppet star with the silky, blue velour skin and gaping red corduroy mouth. “In my early days, I loved hosting the show, but Noname is so much easier. Also, I don’t have to worry what I look like.”

The hospital network and its signature show were brought to life in 1981 because staff didn’t think it was a great idea to have sick kids lying around wasting time watching soap operas, game shows and reruns of The Love Boat, Dallas and Dynasty.

The goal of Noname, and the child-life specialists who bring him to life for one hour each day, is to provide comfort and reduce the stress and anxiety and terror children experience when they are trapped in a hospital battling serious illnesses and injuries.

Parents, some who remember Noname from their youth, will actually book medical appointments for their kids so they can be in the hospital for showtime.

“(Noname) gets fan letters and love letters and Valentines,” Soroka says. “He gets requests to go up to the rooms and kids who watch him every day get really excited because it’s like Elmo walking in.”

Last Tuesday, as part of I Love to Read Month, my buddy Big Daddy Tazz, one of Canada’s most popular standup comedians, and I were invited to be special guests on The Good Day Show and engage in childlike banter with Noname and that day’s human co-host, Justin Sarides.

So there we were, squeezed behind a desk in a small studio, with Sarides parked on our right side and Soroka perched on a chair just offscreen to the left so that Noname could bob and weave in one corner of the small screen.

It was an entire hour of live TV, but it whizzed by in what felt like seconds. Sarides and Noname quizzed Tazz and myself about how we got started in our respective careers — I began reading comic books, while Tazz made school life bearable by making other kids laugh.

Throughout the show, Noname and his human co-host did something remarkable — offering personal greetings by name to each and every kid stuck in the hospital that day. “He does say ‘Hi’ to all the babies, too, but as a group,” Soroka says with a laugh.

Along with providing the voice for Noname, the child-life specialist has to hop up and down to operate the one camera in the room, which Soroka did when it came time for Tazz and I to read to our captive audience of kids.

Tazz read Howard B. Wigglebottom Learns About Bullies, the story of a little bunny who is beset by two mean piggies, while I read What’s Claude Doing?, the heart-tugging tale of a basset hound who can’t come out to play because he refuses to leave his little boy who is home sick.

I learned a valuable lesson — it is hard to read in a normal voice when you are wearing a red-foam clown’s nose. We also helped Sarides with a game of bingo, wherein he would plop down little picture cards and Tazz and I provided silly remarks and a few songs to go with each card.

It’s an interactive show, so kids can phone in from their beds when they fill out the bingo cards, and it’s Noname’s job to answer the phone.

“I LOVED it!!!” is what Tazz the comedian bellowed when asked whether he enjoyed playing second banana to a hand puppet. “I don’t want an Oscar anymore; I just want to be on this show. My favourite part was just being silly, saying ‘Hi’ to all the kids. It’s all about the kids.”

For Sarides, a 23-year-old University of Winnipeg psychology student, Mondays are his favourite days because that’s when he gets to co-host with his puppet pal.

“It’s just the best day,” he chirps after the show wraps. “I get to give out prizes for bingo. Honestly, my mom used to be a child-life specialist, and I had the time, so I thought I’d volunteer.

“I was a patient here in Grade 6 when I had salmonella. I thought it would be cool. I have the best gig you can get as a volunteer. Noname is great. He focuses a lot on pizza. He’s like the kids — he’s nine years old and he’s in the hospital.”

As you can imagine, in the past 38 years, more than a few hands have filled Noname’s brightly coloured body, of which there have been a few incarnations. “My aunt made this one maybe 10 years ago,” Soroka says, holding up the velour puppet. “It fits like a glove.”

She delights in knowing that Noname offers a place of comfort, joy and healing to kids enduring frightening medical procedures. “Noname is always nine years old,” she says. He’s a nine-year-old boy. Luckily, I have one at home, so I can channel a nine-year-old.

“I play him three times a week and the kids don’t notice or complain that one day he has a deep manly voice and the next day it’s a high falsetto. He loves pizza every day; the only thing he doesn’t like is anchovies.”

When he’s not doing live TV, Noname the puppet also visits sick kids, offers encouraging words before operations, and sometimes does a bit of role-playing to prove that some procedure — like removing a tube from your throat — is really not all that scary.

Best of all, he’s there every day at the same time on the same in-house channel offering a safe haven in the hospital’s troubled waters.

“We had a child come down one time to tell Noname her best friend had died,” Soroka recalls, welling up at the memory. “She didn’t do it on the show. We did it before the show, and during the show we all waved to her friend. It was pretty emotional. It was kind of cool that a four-year-old thought her friend was watching the show in heaven.”

Tanya Williams, director of communications and marketing for the Children’s Hospital Foundation of Manitoba, said the 250 or so episodes of The Good Day Show shot every year for the past 38 years are made possible by donors, especially through the Children’s Hospital Book Market.

So feel free to visit goodbear.ca and click donate. You can specify you want the money to go to CHTV and its signature show. Or visit St. Vital Centre for the next book market from April 25-27.

You don’t need to be a child-life specialist — or a puppet, for that matter — to make a difference. You just need to care.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca