Tuesday, 09 December 2008
Thank You Oliver Postgate
Oliver Postgate died on Monday. He was the creator and writer of many cherished children's TV shows. The ones I remember are Ivor the Engine, The Clangers and, of course, Bagpuss. I love Bagpuss so much, I own all 13 episodes on DVD, and I've got a yawning cuddly toy Bagpuss. :)
What a wonderful man to bring so much joy to countless children. If you want to find out more about his remarkable life, you can read his obituary by the BBC and his Wikipedia article.
I smiled at two new bits of information I acquired from the above links. First, this quote (from both articles):
"We would go to the BBC once a year, show them the films we'd made, and they would say, 'Yes, lovely, now what are you going to do next?' We would tell them, and they would say, 'That sounds fine, we'll mark it in for 18 months from now', and we would be given praise and encouragement and some money in advance, and we'd just go away and do it."
Second was a story reported in the BBC obituary: apparently, though the Clangers voices were done using Swanee whistles and thus the actual words were indecipherable, Postgate and another actor used scripts written by Postgate. According to the BBC, he got into a spot of bother when a BBC executive correctly figured out that what one clanger said was: "Oh sod it, the bloody thing won't open."
Oliver Postgate, thank you. Rest in peace.
