Escaping an unhappy childhood, the singular animations of Oliver Postgate have enchanted generations of children. With an unerring ability to create tiny, magical worlds his methods were, like the man, modest, eccentric and very English.
Take ‘Bagpuss’, for example (voted by the British public the best children’s T.V. programme of all time)… Its thirteen episodes were made in an old cowshed for a total of £700. Unable to afford any actors to voice the characters, Postgate took on numerous roles including the narrator; his gentle, inquisitive voice framing each episode perfectly.
‘I had no idea about the children, never gave them a thought!’ he tells Kirsty Young in an excellent episode of ‘Desert Island Discs.’ You have the sense of a man so anxious of adult responsibility that he found solace in these imaginary worlds. He believes in the magic so completely that we, the audience, do too.
‘You are adored!’ Kirsty Young tells him – speaking for all of us.
