Bagpuss

Bagpuss
The original Bagpuss as seen in the series
Format	Children's television
Created by	Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate
Narrated by	Oliver Postgate
Country of origin	UK
No. of episodes	13
Broadcast
Original channel	BBC
Original run	12 February 1974 – 7 May 1974

Bagpuss is a 1974 UK children's television series, made by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate through their company Smallfilms. The title character is "an old, saggy cloth cat, baggy, and a bit loose at the seams". Although only 13 episodes of the show were made, it remains fondly remembered, and was regularly repeated in the UK for thirteen years. In 1999 Bagpuss topped a BBC poll for the UK's favourite children's TV programme.

Format

Each programme began in the same way: through a series of sepia photographs, the viewer is told of a little girl named Emily (played by Emily Firmin, the daughter of illustrator Peter Firmin), who owned a shop. Emily would find lost and broken things and display them in the window, so their owners could one day come and collect them; the shop did not sell anything. She would leave the object in front of her favourite stuffed toy – the large, saggy, pink and white striped cat named Bagpuss, (who was originally intended, when Peter first imagined him, to be a retired Indian Army cat who entertained children in the hospital with his "visible" thoughts, appearing in a "thinks bubble" above his head. When Oliver and Peter were asked to develop this character for a BBC programme Oliver placed him in the shop with other characters and his "thinks bubble" became a way to illustrate the stories and mend or explore the objects that Emily had found). Emily would then recite a verse:

Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss
Old Fat Furry Catpuss
Wake up and look at this thing that I bring
Wake up, be bright, be golden and light
Bagpuss, oh hear what I sing

When Emily had left, Bagpuss would wake up. The programme shifted from sepia to colour stop motion film, and various toys in the shop would also come to life: Gabriel the toad (who, unlike most Smallfilms characters, could move by a special device beneath his can without the use of stop motion animation) and a rag doll called Madeleine. The wooden woodpecker bookend became the drily academic Professor Yaffle (based on the philosopher Bertrand Russell, whom Postgate had once met), while the mice carved on the side of the "mouse organ" (a small mechanical pipe organ that played rolls of music) woke up and scurried around, singing in high-pitched voices. Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner provided the voices of Madeleine and Gabriel respectively, and put together and performed all the proper songs. All the other voices (including the narrator and one out-of-tune mouse) were provided by Oliver Postgate, who also wrote the stories.

The toys would discuss what the new object was; someone (usually Madeleine) would tell a story related to the object (shown in an animated thought bubble over Bagpuss's head), often with a song, which would be accompanied by Gabriel on the banjo (which often sounded a lot more like a guitar), and then the mice, singing in high-pitched squeaky harmony as they worked, would mend the broken object. The newly mended thing would then be put in the shop window, so that whoever had lost it would see it as they went past, and could come in and claim it. Then Bagpuss would start yawning again, and as he fell asleep the narrator would speak as the colour faded to sepia and they all became toys again.

And so their work was done.
Bagpuss gave a big yawn and settled down to sleep
And, of course, when Bagpuss goes to sleep,
All his friends go to sleep too.
The mice were ornaments on the mouse organ.
Gabriel and Madeleine were just dolls.
Professor Yaffle was a carved, wooden bookend in the shape of a woodpecker.
Even Bagpuss himself, once he was asleep, was just an old, saggy cloth cat,
Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams,
But Emily loved him

Title sequence

The scene is set at the turn of the 20th century, with Emily Firmin playing the part of the Victorian child Emily. The first antique village vignette is a cropped image of Horrabridge taken in 1898, and the shop window was at the Firmin family home in Blean.

Episodes

The titles of the thirteen episodes each refer in some way to the object Emily found.

Episode	Title	Original airdate	Summary
1	The Ship in a Bottle	12 February 1974	Some splints of wood are shaken out of a bottle by the mice. Bagpuss tells a story about mermaids and the magic repairs the model ship. The mice put it back into the bottle and raise the sails.
2	The Owls of Athens	19 February 1974	A dirty rag reveals a picture of an owl once cleaned. Madeleine recounts a story explaining why owls sound like they do. Gabriel recounts in song the story of a king who needed a cushion to sit on.
3	The Frog Princess	26 February 1974	Assorted jewels, which initially are thought to represent a cat and mouse but which Gabriel decides were the crown jewels of a frog princess.
4	The Ballet Shoe	5 March 1974	Put to inventive use by the mice, and the subject of a very silly song about its possible use as a rowing boat.
5	The Hamish	12 March 1974	A tartan porcupine pincushion, and a legend of a small, soft creature from Scotland.
6	The Wise Man	19 March 1974	A broken figurine of a Chinese man (the Wise Man of Ling-Po, Yaffle explains) and a turtle.
7	The Elephant	26 March 1974	An elephant missing its ears.
8	The Mouse Mill	2 April 1974	A wooden toy mill demonstrated by the mice to make chocolate biscuits out of butterbeans and breadcrumbs. This turns out to be a mischievous fraud. Gabriel and Madeleine sing a song about how ploughmen, farmers, millers and bakers work at difference stages of bread production. Even stern old Professor Yaffle cries.
9	The Giant	9 April 1974	A statuette, and a lesson about how sizes are relative.
10	Old Man's Beard	16 April 1974	A tangly plant (Clematis vitalba seeding).
11	The Fiddle	23 April 1974	A fiddle that plays itself, and a leprechaun.
12	Flying	30 April 1974	A basket that the mice attempt to turn into a flying machine.
13	Uncle Feedle	7 May 1974	A piece of cloth, destined to be a house for a rag doll.

Production

The characters of Bagpuss

The programmes were made using stop-frame animation. Bagpuss is an actual cloth cat, but was not intended to be such an electric pink. "It should have been a ginger marmalade cat but the company in Folkestone dyeing the material made a mistake and it turned out pink and cream. It was the best thing that ever happened," said Firmin.

Madeleine the rag doll was made by Firmin's wife, Joan, with an extra long dress to hold their children's nightdresses, but Postgate decided it would serve better as one of the characters.

Gabriel the Toad was the only character in the series who could move freely without the use of stop-frame animation. Scenes featuring him playing the banjo and singing would have taken quite a bit of time if filmed with the stop-frame method, so Peter Firmin created a mechanism that helped him control Gabriel through a hole in his can.

Bagpuss has now retired to the Rupert Bear Museum in Canterbury, part of the Museum of Canterbury, together with other characters and Emily's shop window.

Most of the stories and songs used in the series are based on folk songs and fairy tales from around the world. The round sung by the mice (starting with the words "We will fix it...") is to the tune of "Sumer is icumen in", dating from the Middle Ages.

Recognition

In 1987 the University of Kent at Canterbury awarded honorary degrees to Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin. In his speech, Oliver stated that the degree was really intended for Bagpuss, who was subsequently displayed in academic dress.

In 1999 the series came first place in a BBC poll selecting the nation's favourite children's show. It also came fourth in the 2001 Channel 4 poll The 100 Greatest Kids' TV shows.

In 2002 and 2005 a stage show of Bagpuss songs toured UK folk festivals and theatres with original singers Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner, along with Kerr's daughter Nancy Kerr and her husband, James Fagan.

In June 2002, the charity Hospices of Hope opened the Bagpuss Children's Wing within their hospice in Brașov, Romania. The wing was funded entirely by Oliver Postgate using royalties received from the BBC. In April 2012, Marc Jenner from Tunbridge Wells in Kent, ran in the Virgin London Marathon dressed in a 7-foot (2.1 m) Bagpuss costume to raise money for the charity, supported by Emily Firmin and Oliver Postgate's family.

Thom Yorke of the band Radiohead has claimed to be a fan of the show, watching it with his son. It was also part influence for 2003 album Hail to the Thief.

External links

• Bagpuss at bbc.co.uk
• Bagpuss at the Internet Movie Database
• The Smallfilms Treasury's Bagpuss site
• British Film Institute Screen Online
• Bagpuss & Co