You and Me is a BBC television programme for pre-school children broadcast from 1974 to 1992. The programmes consisted of various segments intended to educate and entertain young children and included elements for early literacy and numeracy. Although the programme ended in 1992, repeats of the programme continued until 1995. Background The first programme, called "A New House", was broadcast at 10:45am 14 January 1974 on BBC1, The series was influenced by the American series Sesame Street and the research done by the Children's Television Workshop. It also took guidance from the analysis of children's needs in The Warnock Report, 1978. It aimed therefore, in the jargon of the time, to be very much a "child-centred series" with an emphasis on a child's independence, enjoyment, and understanding. Emotional and social education were held to be as important as more traditional school skills. Relationships with the presenters, who were surrogate parents and carers, were seen as central. There was an assumption that most children watching would be in the company of an adult. Format The series' original intention was to teach children safety, reading and emotional well-being. The show featured a mixture of human actors and puppets. In 1979, new characters were introduced which included the actor Tony Hughes as Herbert The Handyman, along with puppet characters that included Mr Bits and Pieces, a marionette made from Household objects, and Purrfecta the Cat. Herbert was portrayed as a well-meaning but inept handyman, who invariably made a hopeless mess of any odd job he was called upon to do. Although only 5 episodes of Herbert the Handyman were made, they were repeated until 1983. Episodes were also introduced by either: Two stop frame animations, called Alice (a hamster) and Crow. a puppet dragon called Duncan and humans called Vicki (Jan-Feb 1979) and later Sam (Sept 1979-Feb 1982) Purrfecta the Pussycat and a human called Stephen. (They only featured together in a Maths unit April–May 1980) Cosmo and Dibs era In January 1983, two new puppets were introduced. They were a pair of friends of an uncategorisable animal species; Cosmo, a female, from the North East of England, and Dibs, male, a Londoner, both of whom lived in a street market. The set was based on a street market in London’s Shepherd's Bush. Each programme featured a four-minute sketch with Cosmo and Dibs on an area of child interest: sharing, eating, arguing, bullying,