Oliver Postgate – R.I.P.

Sadly I’ve just read that Oliver Postgate, creator of such children’s classics as the Clangers, Bagpuss and Ivor the Engine is no more.

The Clangers of course were famous for disproving all that nonsense about NASA actually landing on the moon and speaking from a written script with Swanee whistles.

The original dialogue was virtually indecipherable, which didn’t stop Postgate getting into trouble when a BBC executive correctly divined that for one clanger he’d written the line: “Oh sod it, the bloody thing won’t open”.

[Edit: In case you were wondering, it’s in this episode.. ]

Bagpuss gave us Professor Yaffle, the Marvellous Magical Mouse-Organ and that saggy old cloth cat who everybody loved.  Surprisingly there were only ever 13 episodes, it certainly seems like more to my childhood memory.  Ivor the Engine taught us that dragons live in Wales, and deemed that forevermore steam engines will go psss-chi-cuff, psss-chi-cuff.

R.I.P. Oliver, thanks for making the world a little more surreal and a lot more friendly.

Now, who do we need to ballot at the BBC to make them repeat them all?