Bagpuss
Bagpuss is a British children's television series, made by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate through their company Smallfilms. The series of 13 episodes was first broadcast from 12 February to 7 May 1974. The title character was "a saggy, old cloth cat, baggy, and a bit loose at the seams". Although only 13 episodes were made, it remains fondly remembered, and was frequently repeated in the UK until 1987. In early 1999, Bagpuss topped a BBC poll for the UK's favourite children's television 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, who owned a shop. Emily found lost and broken things and displayed them in the window, so their owners could 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, originally intended by Firmin 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 Postgate and Firmin were asked to develop this character for a BBC programme, Postgate 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 then recited a verse:
After Emily had left, Bagpuss woke up. The programme shifted from sepia to colour stop motion film, and various toys in the shop came to life: Gabriel the toad and a rag doll called Madeleine. The wooden woodpecker bookend became the drily academic Professor Yaffle, while the mice carved on the side of the "mouse organ" 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 folk songs. All the other voices were provided by Postgate, who also wrote the stories.
The toys discussed what the new object was; someone would tell a story related to the object, often with a song, accompanied by Gabriel on the banjo, and then the mice, singing in high-pitched squeaky harmony to the tune of Sumer Is Icumen In as they worked, mended the broken object. There was much banter between the characters, with the pompous Yaffle constantly finding fault with the playful mice: his complaint, 'Those mice are never serious!' became his main catchphrase. However, peace was always restored by the end of the episode, usually thanks to the timely intervention of Bagpuss, Gabriel or Madeleine. The newly mended thing was then placed 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.
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, though nothing is known of the other photo of the children with the pram. The shop window was at the Firmin family home in Blean.Episodes
The episodes were originally broadcast at 1:45 pm on BBC1. The titles of the episodes each refer in some way to the object Emily found.| Episode | Title | Original air date | Summary |
| 1 | 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 a bird 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 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 different 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 | "The Old Man's Beard" | 16 April 1974 | A tangly plant, and a loom for weaving. |
| 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. Professor Yaffle recites a poem about Percy Pratt, a man who apparently invented the aeroplane. |
| 13 | "Uncle Feedle" | 7 May 1974 | A piece of cloth, destined to be a house for a rag doll. |
Production
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 asked Joan to make a new version 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. The character was based on a real toad that lived in the basement area of the flat that Peter and Joan rented in Twickenham beside the River Thames. Gabriel was originally made for Firmin’s live ITV programme The Musical Box. Postgate chose him to be one of the characters in Bagpuss and he was made into a new, slightly larger version.
Professor Yaffle was created as the book-End who had access to "facts". The BBC did not like the original character, a man in top hat made from black Irish bog oak, called "Professor Bogwood". They thought he was too frightening and asked for a non-human instead.
Bagpuss is now retired. First, he lived with Rupert Bear in the Rupert Bear Museum in Canterbury, part of the Canterbury Heritage Museum. After its closure at the end of 2017, he and Rupert Bear moved to the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge in Canterbury.
Most of the stories and songs used in the series are based on folk songs and fairy tales from around the world.
Recognition
In 1987, the University of Kent at Canterbury awarded honorary degrees to Postgate and Firmin. In his speech, Postgate stated that the degree was really intended for Bagpuss, who was subsequently displayed in academic dress.In 1999, Bagpuss came first in a BBC poll selecting the nation's favourite children's programme made and broadcast by that corporation. It also came fourth in the Channel 4 poll, The 100 Greatest Kids' TV Shows, broadcast in 2001.
In 2002 and 2005, a stage show of Bagpuss songs toured the 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 in its hospice in Brașov, Romania. The wing was funded entirely by Postgate from royalties received from the BBC. In April 2012, Marc Jenner from Tunbridge Wells in Kent ran in the Virgin London Marathon dressed in a Bagpuss costume to raise money for the charity, supported by Emily Firmin and Postgate's family.
Thom Yorke of the band Radiohead has claimed to be a fan of the series, watching it with his son. It was an influence for 2003 album Hail to the Thief. Gabriel's song in Episode 2 was the acknowledged inspiration for the album track "There There".
Bagpuss appeared on one of the twelve postage stamps issued by Royal Mail in January 2014 to celebrate classic children's programmes.
Home media
In 1993 and then in May 1999, PolyGram released a video entitled The Complete Bagpuss which included all 13 episodes. It was released in DVD format in April 2005, and then re-released in April 2015.The first video was released by Channel 5, and the rest were released by Universal Pictures.