The sun and the baby

If you are a 1990s kid, you are likely to remember Teletubbies. A British pre-school children’s television programme, the series followed four colourful creatures called Teletubbies, so named for the TV screens in their tummies. They spoke gibberish, sparked some controversy in 1999 when one of the characters, Tinky Winky, started carrying a purse, but also featured a few other elements of interest, including a character called the Sun Baby. The Sun Baby was literally a sunshine with the face of a real human baby. That baby — Jess Smith, is now an adult and a photo of hers as an adult holding a baby went viral recently. But the official Teletubbies’ Twitter account set the record straight: The Sun Baby did not have a baby of her own.

Here’s the context: On Monday, a BBC host named Greg James retweeted a post of the photo of Smith with a baby claiming that the Sun Baby had a baby, the implication being that the child in the picture with Smith was her own. Technically, the picture is of two Sun Babies, which is touching and sweet in its own way. After the picture went viral and people kept retweeting the picture with the caption ‘The Sun Baby had a Baby, Teletubbies,’ official UK Twitter account directly clarified that replying to James’ tweet, noting that seeing the original with the new Sun Baby, named Berry, makes them feel old, too.