I met Bagpuss today!!! Oliver Postgate was signing his book in Borders on Charing Cross Road and I stumbled across it - didn't buy the book though, I didn't have much money so I got him to sign some Bagpuss postcards for me instead. He had Bagpuss and some Clangers with him - I stroked Bagpuss butI'm not sure if it was the original one from the program. It looked kind of old and grubby so I think it was. It was a very exciting moment. Maybe I should buy the book then - why is it so brilliant?

>I met Bagpuss today!!! Oliver Postgate was signing his book in Borders on Charing Cross Road and I stumbled across it - didn't buy the book though, I didn't have much money so I got him to sign some Bagpuss postcards for me instead.

Didn't know about this at all!

He had Bagpuss and some Clangers with him - I stroked Bagpuss butI'm not sure if it was the original one from the program. It looked kind of old and grubby so I think it was. It was a very exciting moment. Maybe I should buy the book then - why is it so brilliant?

Well I really enjoyed it because it's so much more than your bog-standard autobiography - quite apart from the fact that he seems one of the nicer blokes on the planet (never met him, admittedly, but sometimes, you can just tell from reading the first person), he seems to have done so much with his life. He didn't even turn to animation till he was in his thirties, and there's lots of stuff I never knew about the programmes. He mentions a Clangers Election Special called Vote For Froglet, made in 1974, although admittedly he's a little sketchy on dates, so it's not the place to go if you want that sort of info. Even so, it's a lovely book, and Peter Firmin contributes some quite beautiful illustrations.

I wrote to Oliver Postgate last year, as he lives in almost the same road that my girlfriend lived in. I wrote asking if I could meet him and Bagpuss etc.. He wrote a really good reply back, declining though, as he said he was a very shy person and "Bagpuss is the star - not me !"

i was in the middle of writing a book about children's television (before a nervous breakdown kicked that idea in the balls) and interviewed both postgate and firmin on two occasions, and by christ, they were lovely. really lovely. they werre both fantastically generous and, given a little prodding, started to talk honestly about their stuff, and it's all so philosophical and peacenik and wonderful, and they're basically two lovely old quietly revolutionary (both intentionally and accidentally) geniuses.

sorry, bit emotional...

j xxx

I must try and read 'Seeing Things'. It sounds lovely. What other shows did he create? My boyfriend tells me he did Ivor the Engine and Noggin the Nog, is this true?

>I must try and read 'Seeing Things'. It sounds lovely. What other shows did he create? My boyfriend tells me he did Ivor the Engine and Noggin the Nog, is this true?

Certainly did - Pogle's Wood too, which I'm old enough to just about remember. Something I didn't know was that his partner in his company Smallfilms - Peter Firmin - created Basil Brush!

>Certainly did - Pogle's Wood too, which I'm old enough to just about remember. Something I didn't know was that his partner in his company Smallfilms - Peter Firmin - created Basil Brush!

I still have my Pogles Wood annual in the loft somewhere. One of the best children's Tv show from that era. Never realised it was Postgate though.

here's what they did:

the pingwings (3 series, b&w)
the seal of neptune (1 series, b&w)
the mermaid's pearls (1 series, b&w)
ivor the engine (3 series, b&w)
the pogles (1 series, b&w)
pogles wood (2 series, b&w)
the saga of noggin the nog (5 series, colour, last four series re-made)
the clangers (two series, colour)
bagpuss (one series, colour)
ivor the engine (one huge series, colour)
the saga of noggin the nog (one series, colour)
totty and the doll's house (one series, colour)

in addition, peter firmin created the three scamps (one of which was indeed basil brush) and piloted, solo, the early-eighties series 'pinnie.'

(dull, aren't i?)

j xxx

>here's what they did:
>
>the pingwings (3 series, b&w)
>the seal of neptune (1 series, b&w)
>the mermaid's pearls (1 series, b&w)
>ivor the engine (3 series, b&w)
>the pogles (1 series, b&w)
>pogles wood (2 series, b&w)
>the saga of noggin the nog (5 series, colour, last four series re-made)
>the clangers (two series, colour)
>bagpuss (one series, colour)
>ivor the engine (one huge series, colour)
>the saga of noggin the nog (one series, colour)
>totty and the doll's house (one series, colour)
>
>in addition, peter firmin created the three scamps (one of which was indeed basil brush) and piloted, solo, the early-eighties series 'pinnie.'
>
>(dull, aren't i?)

anything but!

btw, are you the same Jason Hazeley out of Ben & Jason? Been meaning to ask for ages.

Yes he is. Honestly. People! Jason forgot to mention OP and PF doing the ling material on "Sam On Boff Island" - a Words & Pictures style schools strand that introduced the world to Tony "baldrick" Robinson. A sort of Do Not Adjust Your Set to BlackAdder's Python, if you will.

The memory of it still treads on my grave, but we are not TV Cream and shall not dwell 'pon it.

>I stroked Bagpuss butI'm not sure if it was
>the original one from the program.

Yes, it would have been!

Well, to be precise, there are *two* original Bagpusses; one is a glove puppet (which Oliver owns) and the other has a full internal skeleton for stop-motion animation (which Peter owns). Oliver's Bagpuss, the one you would have stroked, is the one being played with by Emily Firmin in the title sequence.

I had the immense good fortune to visit Oliver at his home on a couple of occasions earlier this year to record a voice-over for a TV promo. He really is one of the most gentle, fascinating invididuals I have ever had the privilege to meet, and extremely generous, too - he gave me a number of items of memorabilia from his personal collection, which rather took me aback.

And when he got Bagpuss down, put him on his arm and started doing some dialogue in the proper Bagpuss voice, and then gave him to me and said "Go on, give him a cuddle"... the emotion was almost too much to bear (genuinely!)

I highly recommend you seek out his two booklets, Thinking It Through : The Plain Man's Guide To The Bomb and The Emperor's New Clothes. Both are dead cheap (under £3 I think) and available through Amazon last time I looked - he's a committed pacifist and nuclear disarmer, and the booklets contain some of the most lucid and sane anti-nuclear arguments I have ever read.

Totty!! Ah, wonderful that was. Marchpaine and Apple and the rest.

I met Bagpuss in the library once. i was only 4, so I can't remember much about Postgate, just that there was a vague air of "i have a hangover, please don't shout too loud" about the whole process. Though that might have been my mother.

>Totty!! Ah, wonderful that was. Marchpaine and Apple and the rest.
>
>
I just remember being incredibly frightened by it. Marchpaine was psychotic.

When Apple burst into flames I almost messed myself. And Marchpaine laughing from upstairs as he did so, using much Lee Scratch Perry echo...

I shiver just thinking about it.

Postgate was interviewed on BBC1 this morning. It was quite sweet really as he was obviously supposed to be there to publicise his book but he didn't really look comfortable with the idea. At one point he said "I mention that in my autobiography" and half picked it up, then put it down again and swiftly moved on. Also it was quite nice when the interviewer talked about the way P & F set out to create a dream-world safe for children (or something like that) only to be told "No, we were trying to make money."

I found my Totty book the other day. Isn't it by Rummer Godden or whatever, I remember it was someone I didn't expect. I must read it again.

Tesco's are selling Bagpuss Beanies

>I found my Totty book the other day. Isn't it by Rummer Godden or whatever, I remember it was someone I didn't expect. I must read it again.


It's called "The story of a doll's house" and it is by Rumer Godden. Bagpuss's name comes, apparently, from a Colonel Bagpuss in a Doris Lessing short story I've yet to identify, despite asking a Lessing expert at London University...