If you don’t attend kindergarten, or aren’t the proud parent of someone who does, there’s a good chance you’ll be completely clueless as to who or what The Wiggles are. Although they might look like four nondescript, middle-aged Aussie blokes (albeit permanently happy ones), they are in fact the world’s most popular children’s entertainers. Since they formed in 1991, they’ve sold 30 million DVDs and CDs, and attracted a host of celebrity fans such as John Travolta, Robert De Niro, Kylie Minogue, Gwyneth Paltrow, Johnny Depp and even Metallica’s James Hetfield. They’ve also sold out the legendary Madison Square Garden concert venue in New York, and were officially Australia’s biggest entertainment export of the past decade, with pay packets eclipsing the likes of Russell Crowe, AC/DC, Nicole Kidman and Kylie herself. How have they done it? By creating charmingly catchy, simple nursery rhyme-type tunes. The multi-coloured turtle-neck wearing foursome – made up of Murray Cook (in red), Anthony Field (in blue), Jeff Fat (in purple) and Sam Moran (in yellow) – will be hitting Yas Island next week, so we caught up with Murray to find out what’s in store for the capital’s littl’uns
What can we expect from your show in Abu Dhabi?
The show in Abu Dhabi will feature many of our favourite songs, requested by our fans. We’ve never been to Abu Dhabi before but we performed in Dubai in 2010 and loved the experience. The audiences were amazing, the children sang and danced throughout the concert, and we hope to see them all again at our Abu Dhabi shows.
What’s the secret to your massive popularity?
It’s simple, really, we enjoy what we do and we know the children enjoy the songs we play. A lot of what we do comes from the child’s perspective, and an awareness of their early development. This is part of our popularity: our songs are educational as well as entertaining. So we always write them with education and entertainment in mind.
Looking at your uniforms, they look a bit Star Trek-esque. Were you thinking of Spock and Kirk when you designed them?
No, not at all. Our uniforms were just a good way for the kids to identify which Wiggle was which by association with colours.
What’s this about Metallica being fans of yours?
James Hetfield came to one of our shows with his children, so we did one of our songs in the style of ‘Enter Sandman’ for him. But we don’t plan on releasing any heavy metal songs on our CDs or DVDs, because I don’t think our audience would really appreciate it.
This must have been up there with the major highlights of your career.
Yeah, one of them, but we’ve had so many highlights that they are impossible to name. Performing to audiences around the world, especially in new cities is always lots of fun. The big shows to 20,000 people and the small shows to 2,000 people mean just as much to us.
All this success must mean you get recognised in the streets these days.
Sometimes it happens – especially when we’re wearing our Wiggles skivvies. But we don’t get chased by the professional paparazzi, only mums with cameras!
After Abu Dhabi, what’s next for the band?
The Wiggles will be celebrating their 20th anniversary this year, so if any of our fans want to give us birthday cakes they’re more than welcome! After that, we’re off touring the USA, UK, New Zealand, Asia and then Australia. You know, none of us are getting any younger, but as long as the audience still wants to come and see us, and as long as we enjoy it, we’ll continue to perform.
Dhs200-Dhs350, children under two sitting on their parents’ knees do not require a ticket. May 13-14 at 11am and 2pm. Flash Forum, Yas Island, www.timeouttickets.com
