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Greg, Murray, Jeff and Anthony were the original Wiggles. This is what they're doing now.

 

If there’s a young child in your household, you’ll know The Wiggles.

They’re your unofficial, cheap babysitters. They kept your kid happy and distracted, even if that damn big red car song drives you a little bit insane.

If you don’t have a young child in the house, but have in the past, or you um, were a young child in the 90s and 2000s, you’ll also know The Wiggles.

Side note: The Wiggles had an adults-only concert and it went just as expected. Post continues below video.

Video by The Wiggles

But if you happen upon them now, the faces of the line-up may be… unfamiliar.

Blue Wiggle Anthony is still there, but… Greg? Murray? Jeff?

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Are they still wearing solely block coloured skivvies? Has their friendship endured? Do they still enjoy fruit salad (yummy, yummy)?

We have so many questions, so in the name of nostalgia, we investigated. Here's what the original Wiggles line-up are doing now.

Greg Page - yellow Wiggle.

greg page original wiggle
Image: AAP.
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Ah, Greg. The original yellow Wiggle.

Greg, 47, first left the line-up in 2006 due to health issues. He was diagnosed with Orthostatic Intolerance, a disorder that affects blood flow and led to fainting if he stood upright for too long.

In 2012, Greg briefly returned to the Wiggles before three out of four retired.

He wrote a book named Now and Then about his diagnosis and journey as a Wiggle.

Writing it was, he told the Sydney Morning Herald, a way to find closure and reconcile being 'Greg Page' and 'Greg Wiggle'.

''That's the thing, you have these people who have a connection to you but they're connected to a perception of who they think you are,'' he said. ''With the book, this is actually who I am. It's not an image on stage, not an image on a DVD; there's a person that actually wears the skivvy, a human being with faults and flaws.''

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Since then, Greg has been busy with his company Greg Page Entertainment, which creates entertainment ideas and concepts for television and stage, and consults other brands on their development, specialising in early childhood and preschool of course.

Shortly after leaving The Wiggles, Greg joined the cast of Butterscotch's Playground, which he helped develop and in 2014 he joined the Two by 2 team.

In 2017, Greg joined forces with cricketer Shane Watson and his wife Lee on Let's Activate, a kids' fitness program using song and dance.

Last year, he celebrated 10 years of volunteering at the annual KidzWish Christmas Party for more than 3500 Illawarra children with a sickness, disability or disadvantage.

He's also put on his original yellow skivvy a couple of times to make surprise appearances on The Wiggles.

This week it was announced Greg will make a return to television after writing 50 songs for Team Rescue, a children's show that has already been picked up by the ABC.

It will promote child safety messages to prevent the number of children that end up in hospital due to preventable accidents each year, the Daily Mail reported.

Murray Cook - red Wiggle.

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Murray, 59, was the trusty red Wiggle until 2013, but even after his retirement he wasn't quite ready to let the Wiggles go completely.

After retiring, Murray still provided guitar, vocals and songwriting to the group, remained involved in its creative and production aspects and in 2013, served as The Wiggles' tour manager.

Earlier this year, Murray told Vice's The Feed he felt "pretty lost" for the few years after hanging up the red skivvy.

"It's hard to give up something you've been doing for 20 years and move on, and especially something that takes up so much of your life," he said.

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"I second guessed myself a lot, I thought I might have made the wrong decision."

He said he wanted to be remembered as someone who brought a lot of joy to families.

"I really do think The Wiggles is about joy, about spreading joy."

After The Wiggles, Murray pursued his music career, playing instruments for a number of musicians and bands as well as continuing to play with his band Bang Shang A Lang.

In 2015, he joined soul rock band The Soul Movers, and has been touring Australia again with the band. He's been on the road without his red skivvy, but for many Murray is still the red Wiggle.

"We did a show [in Perth] where there were lots of young people there in their twenties [that] went nuts because it was me," Cook shared on Today Extra. "I must have taken about 20 selfies!"

Jeff Fatt - purple Wiggle.

 

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WAKE UP JEFF.

Jeff, 66, actually rejected joining the group at first, telling Anthony he was not interested. But... well, that didn't last, because he became the original purple Wiggle.

He was the only original Wiggle without a background in early childhood education and once said his falling asleep shtick was "because it was a way of getting me involved in the shows without actually having to do anything" and that is the level of chill we should all aspire to be.

It was Jeff who first decided it was time to hang up his skivvy, then Murray and Greg followed suit.

In July 2011, Jeff blacked out while driving and crashed into a tree. He was rushed to hospital for emergency heart surgery and was fitted with a pacemaker for an irregular heart beat.

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This health scare made him realise he could not go on as a Wiggle forever, but after retiring Jeff has remained firmly embedded in the Wiggles' world.

"I don't really stop being a Wiggle because people still recognise you and I don't have a problem at all doing that. That's naturally the way that I live," he told the ABC in 2018.

"I still feel very connected to the Wiggles. I'm still part of the board. I'm a director and we have regular meetings at The Wiggle headquarters, so I'm always running into Anthony if he's not on tour and the other new Wiggles in the studio."

Anthony Field - blue Wiggle.

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Anthony is the enduring Wiggle. The only original still in the line-up... The OG. He's been wearing the blue skivvy for almost 30 years.

Anthony has been open about his battles with mental illness, including depression, throughout his time with the group.

"I’d be in the dressing rooms bloody bawling my eyes out by myself, after you’d just played to, you know, a couple of thousand people," he told Ahn Do in a 2017 episode of Brush With Fame, crediting bandmate Murray as a huge help to him during this time.

"Murray sort of understood what was going on probably better than most," he said.

"He actually came up to me and went, ‘Mate, are you OK? This is sort of happening a lot. There must be something going on."

These days, Anthony is in a positive place. He went on mood-stabilising drugs for three years, and now no longer needs them. In 2011, he had enough clarity to write How I Got My Wiggle Back, a book about his mental health.

When Anthony's not fulfilling his Wiggles duties, he, new purple Wiggle Lachie and two others perform as Unusual Commoners, an adult band playing a mixture of traditional Australian, Irish, Scottish and folk music.