best for REAL LIFE
Emily Firmin’s dad created the beloved television cat, in their garden outhouse and it became one of the most iconic children’s TV programmes of all time...
Clutching Bagpuss in my arms, I looked at him lovingly as my dad’s business partner, Oliver Postgate, took a picture.
‘Well done, Emily, keep this up and you will have earnt yourself a bag of sweets,’ my dad Peter smiled.
It was 1972 and at age seven, I was given a starring role in the Bagpuss series. The sepia-tinted photographs at the beginning of each episode showed me (as myself ) cuddling the famous pink and white striped cat. He resided in an unusual shop I ‘owned’. Everything in the window was something that somebody had once lost. I’d bring broken objects for Bagpuss to mend with the help of six mice, featuring tales from other abandoned toys – including Professor Yaffle (a bookish wooden woodpecker), Gabriel the toad, and Madeleine the rag doll – who came to life when no one else was around.
‘Bagpuss, dear Bagpuss, old fat furry cat puss…Wake up and look at this thing that I bring…,’ I would say.
There were only 13 episodes made in 1974, but it still stands out as a true classic of children’s entertainment.
I grew up on a farm with five older sisters in Blean, near Canterbury. We were close, living on a farm with lots of outhouses – including a stable for my pony Fred, and then an old cow shed where my dad worked.
Oliver, an animator, puppeteer, narrator and writer, also worked in a converted pig sty! It housed animation cameras and creations that would later be watched across the UK.
The farm was where the company Smallfilms was born and, as well as being my home, it birthed Ivor the Engine, Noggin the Nog, Basil Brush, The Clangers and of course Bagpuss!
My dad had got into TV after Oliver, a stage manager for ITV, knocked on his door in the Fifties and asked for help with the illustrations of a new children’s programme. At the time, my father was an art lecturer and created stained glass windows. The rest was history!
My mum Joan was a dab hand at making things from scratch. On the farm we had chickens, three donkeys, rabbits, guinea pigs, and sheep. It was an idyllic upbringing, and my mum would even dye their shaved wool to make it into rugs or carpet. She made her own jewellery, and was very much the artistic director of Smallfilms, as my dad learned a lot of her craft to create his characters. She created a tapestry in the Owls of Athens episode and advised Dad on how to do stitches for Bagpuss. She also hand-knitted the original Clangers and created their trapeze dresses, which were influenced by a photoshoot of Twiggy!
