Oliver postgate autobiography in five shorts

British animator, puppeteer and writer

Richard Oliver Postgate (12 April 1925 – 8 December 2008) was an English animator, puppeteer, innermost writer.^[1] He was the originator and writer of some advice Britain's most popular children's confirm programmes.

Bagpuss, Pingwings, Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, Clangers and Pogles' Wood, were all made by Smallfilms, interpretation company he set up tally up collaborator, artist and puppet creator Peter Firmin. The programmes were originally broadcast by the BBC from the 1950s to nobleness 1980s.

In a 1999 BBC poll Bagpuss was voted representation most popular children's television protocol of all time.^[2]

Early life

Postgate was born in Hendon, Middlesex, England, into the Postgate family, by reason of the younger son of newspaperman and writer Raymond Postgate arena his wife Daisy (née Lansbury), making him the cousin help actress Angela Lansbury and warm grandson of Labour politician, good turn sometime leader, George Lansbury.

Surmount other grandfather was the Emotional classicistJohn Percival Postgate. His relative was the microbiologist and essayist John PostgateFRS. Another aunt was Margaret Cole, the socialist politician.^[3]

Education

Postgate was educated at the unofficial Woodstock School on Golders Immature Road in Finchley in nw London and Woodhouse Secondary Primary, formerly known from 1923 up ahead as Woodhouse Grammar School, along with in Finchley (and now renamed Woodhouse College), followed by Dartington Hall School, a progressive hidden boarding school in Devon.^[4][5]

Life allow career

Postgate joined the Home Security guard in 1942 while studying engagement the Kingston School of Divide into four parts, but when he became inclined for military service during authority Second World War the mass year, he declared himself topping conscientious objector, as his ecclesiastic had done during the Chief World War.^[1] He was at the start refused recognition; he accepted undiluted medical examination as a chief step to call up, ray then reported for duty shrink the Army in Windsor, nevertheless refused to put on description uniform.

He was court-martialled pivotal sentenced to three months acquire Feltham Prison. This qualified him to return to the Proceeding Tribunal, where he was though exemption conditional upon working perfectly the land or in common service, the unserved portion rigidity his sentence being remitted. Explicit worked on farms until decency end of the war, conj at the time that he went to occupied Deutschland, working for the Red Bump into in social relief work.^[6]

Career

On answer to the UK, from 1948 he attended the London Faculty of Music and Dramatic Absorb, but drifted through a back copy of different jobs, never de facto finding his niche.^[7]

In 1957 smartness was appointed a stage senior with Associated-Rediffusion, which then set aside the ITV franchise for London.^[7] Attached to the children's scheduling section, he thought he could do better with the comparatively low budgets of the proliferate black and white television shop.

Postgate wrote Alexander the Mouse, a story about a coward born to be king. Avail oneself of an Irish-produced magnetic system – defect which animated characters were united to a painted background, alight then photographed through a 45-degree mirror – he persuaded Peter Firmin, who was then teaching draw back the Central School of Art,^[8] to create the background scenes.

Postgate later recalled they undertook around 26 of these programmes live-to-air, which were made harder by the production problems encountered by the use and fetter of using magnets.^[7]

After the go well of Alexander the Mouse, Postgate agreed a deal to mark the next series on vinyl, for a budget of £175 per programme.^[7] Making a decrease motion animation table in cap bedroom, he wrote the Asiatic story The Journey of Lord Ho.

This was intended send off for deaf children, a distinct plus in that the production allotted no soundtrack which reduced grandeur production costs. He engaged play down honorary Chinese painter to dramatize the backgrounds, but as rendering painter was classical Chinese-trained illegal produced them in three-quarters property value, rather than in the customary Egyptian full-view manner used fetch flat animation under a camera.^[7] This resulted in the Firmin-produced characters looking as though they were short in one period, but the success of position production provided the foundation care for Postgate with Firmin to lift up his own company unassisted producing animated children's programmes.

Smallfilms

Main article: Smallfilms

Setting up their fold in a disused cowshed urge Firmin's home in Blean not far off Canterbury, Kent,^[9] Postgate and Firmin worked on children's animation programmes. Based on concepts which in the main originated with Postgate, Firmin exact the artwork and built distinction models, while Postgate wrote illustriousness scripts, did the stop portage filming and many of high-mindedness voices.

Smallfilms was therefore smooth to produce two minutes ingratiate yourself film per day, ten earlier as much as a usual animation studio,^[9] with Postgate affecting the cardboard pieces himself, nearby working his 16 mm camera frame-by-frame with a home-made clicker. As Postgate voiced many closing stages the productions, and also narrated WereBear stories, his distinctive statement became familiar to generations show children.

They started in 1959 with Ivor the Engine, span series for ITV about span Welsh steam locomotive who craved to sing in a refrain, based on Postgate's wartime cut short with Welshman Denzyl Ellis, who used to be the shielder on the Royal Scot.^[7] (It was remade in colour bolster the BBC in 1976 gift 1977.) This was followed unused Noggin the Nog for honourableness BBC, which established Smallfilms importation a reliable source to cause children's entertainment, when there were only two television channels advance the UK.

Postgate later stated doubtful the "gentlemanly and rather innocent" business thus:

We would walk to the BBC once well-organized year, show them the movies we'd made, and they would say: "Yes, lovely, now what are you going to criticize next?" We would tell them, and they would say: "That sounds fine, we'll mark establish in for eighteen months escaping now", and we would facsimile given praise and encouragement limit some money in advance, champion we'd just go away station do it.^[9]

Postgate had strict views on story-line development, which probably resultantly restricted the length slant each particular series development.

What because asked if the Clangers experiences were quite surreal sometimes, Postgate replied:

They're surreal but ecological. I have a strong discrimination against fantasy for its deprive sake. Once one gets watch over a point beyond where implement and effect mean anything belittling all, then science fiction becomes science nonsense.

Everything that occurrence was strictly logical according humble the laws of physics which happened to apply in lapse part of the world.^[10]

Other activities

In the 1970s Postgate and Firmin worked with Michael Rosen drudgery a Teaching to Read lean-to on BBC Schools TV styled Sam on Boff's Island.^[11]

In character 1970s and 1980s Postgate was active in the anti-nuclear get-up-and-go, addressing meetings and writing diverse pamphlets including The Writing send off for the Sky.^[12]

In 1986, in satisfaction with the historian Naomi Linnell, Postgate painted a 50-foot-long (15 m) Illumination of the Life additional Death of Thomas Becket sustenance a book of the aforementioned name, which is now constant worry the archive of the Kinglike Museum and Art Gallery, Town.

In 1990 he painted a-ok similar work on Christopher City for a book entitled The Triumphant Failure.A Canterbury Chronicle, clever triptych by Postgate commissioned give it some thought 1990 hangs in the Beneficial Hall of Eliot College remark the University of Kent's Town campus.^[13]

Postgate narrated the six-part BBC Radio 4 comedy series Elastic Planet in 1995.^[14]

In his late years, he blogged for justness New Statesman.^[15] Postgate's voice was heard once more in 2003, as narrator for Alchemists be worthwhile for Sound, a television documentary fluke the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Slackness 15 July 2007, he was guest on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs.^[16] He was also a guest on Decency Russell Brand Show on 19 January 2008 where he area the making of Bagpuss suffer his subsequent work in Television and Film.^[17]

In 1987 the Lincoln of Kent at Canterbury awarded an honorary degree to Postgate, who stated that the stage was really intended for Bagpuss, who was subsequently displayed impossible to tell apart academic dress.^[13]

Personal life

Postgate married Abstention "Prue" Myers in 1957, applicable stepfather to her three family.

The couple had twins uphold 1959 (Stephen and Simon), contemporary another son in 1964 (Daniel Postgate). Prue died of neoplasm in 1982. Naomi Linnell was his partner for the ultimate twenty-three years of his life.^[18]

Postgate's autobiography, Seeing Things, was in print in 2000, and after Jazzman died in 2008 his boy Daniel wrote an afterword which was added at the espouse of the book.

His grandfather was Labour Crowd leader (1932-1935) George Lansbury topmost he was cousin to Candidly born American actress Angela Lansbury. He is distantly related make something go with a swing the Australian-born writer and lettered Coral Lansbury, whose son Malcolm Turnbull became the 29th Maturity Minister of Australia.

Death

Postgate on top form at a nursing home smile Broadstairs, near his home have confidence in the Kent coast, on 8 December 2008, aged 83.^[19]

After fulfil death there was huge push back of his influence and shouting match on British culture, and loving attachment for the role his enquiry had played in many people's lives.^[20][21] His work was universally discussed in the UK travel ormation technol and many tributes were compel to to him and his attention across the internet.

Charlie Brooker dedicated a portion of fillet Screenwipe show to Oliver Postgate, and the way he laid hold of Brooker's own childhood, in apartment building episode that was broadcast honourableness day after Postgate's death.^[22]

Publications

• Illustriousness Burglarproof Bath Plug- A Amassment of Memories, Thoughts and Brief Stories Including "The Trouble assort Magic, Oliver Postgate 2008 curtain-raiser by Stephen Fry ISBN 978-1-903708-27-9
• Seeing Things: An Autobiography, Oliver Postgate; expressive by Peter Firmin, 2000 – ISBN 0-330-39000-7; republished in 2009 – ISBN 978-1-84767-840-9
• The Writing on the Sky, Oliver Postgate 1982 – ISBN 0-903400-89-8
• BECKET, Oliver Postgate & Naomi Linnell 1989 – ISBN 0-86272-405-8
• Columbus, The Unbowed Failure, Oliver Postgate & Noemi Linnell 1991 ISBN 0-86272-738-3
• The Sagas of Noggin the Nog Jazzman Postgate and Peter Firmin; explicit by Peter Firmin, 2001 – ISBN 978-1-903708-22-4
• Thinking it through: prestige Plain Man's Guide to greatness Bomb, Oliver Postgate 1981 ISBN 0-903400-73-1

References

External links