Oliver Postgate
Encyclopedia
Oliver Postgate (12 April 1925 – 8 December 2008) was an English animator
Animator
An animator is an artist who creates multiple images that give an illusion of movement called animation when displayed in rapid sequence; the images are called frames and key frames. Animators can work in a variety of fields including film, television, video games, and the internet. Usually, an...
, puppeteer
Puppeteer
A puppeteer is a person who manipulates an inanimate object, such as a puppet, in real time to create the illusion of life. The puppeteer may be visible to or hidden from the audience. A puppeteer can operate a puppet indirectly by the use of strings, rods, wires, electronics or directly by his or...
and writer.
He was the creator and writer of some of Britain's most popular children's television programmes. Pingwings
Pingwings
Pingwings was an animated black-and-white children's television series of 18 ten-minute episodes broadcast in the UK on ITV in 1961. It first aired on Southern Television. Created by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin of Smallfilms, it starred a family of penguin-like creatures who lived at the back...
, Pogles' Wood
Pogles' Wood
Pogles' Wood was an animated British Children's television series produced by Smallfilms between 1966 and 1967 and screened by the BBC between 1966 and 1968 as part of the Watch with Mother series. The Pogles were tiny country folk who lived in a tree...
, Noggin the Nog
Noggin the Nog
Noggin the Nog is a popular British children's character appearing in his own TV series and series of illustrated books, the brainchild of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin. The TV series is considered a 'cult classic' from the golden age of British children's television...
, Ivor the Engine
Ivor the Engine
Ivor the Engine is a British children's animation by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin's Smallfilms company. It is a children's television series relating the adventures of a small green locomotive who lived in the "top left-hand corner of Wales" and worked for The Merioneth and Llantisilly Railway...
, Clangers
Clangers
Clangers is a popular British stop-motion animated children's television series of short stories about a family of mouse-like creatures who live on, and in, a small blue planet . They speak in whistles, and eat green soup supplied by the Soup Dragon...
and Bagpuss
Bagpuss
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"...
, were all made by Smallfilms
Smallfilms
Smallfilms was a British company that made animated television programmes for children, from 1959 to the 1980s. It was a partnership between Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin . Several very popular series of short films were made using stop-motion animation, including The Clangers, Noggin the Nog,...
, the company he set up with Peter Firmin
Peter Firmin
Peter Arthur Firmin is an English artist and animator. He was the founder of Smallfilms, along with Oliver Postgate. Between them they created a number of popular children's TV programmes, The Saga of Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, Clangers, Bagpuss and Pogles' Wood.-Early life:He trained at...
, and were shown on the BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
between the 1950s and the 1980s, and on ITV
ITV
ITV is the major commercial public service TV network in the United Kingdom. Launched in 1955 under the auspices of the Independent Television Authority to provide competition to the BBC, it is also the oldest commercial network in the UK...
from 1959 to the present day. In a 1999 poll, Bagpuss was voted the most popular children's television programme of all time.
Early life
Postgate was born in HendonHendon
Hendon is a London suburb situated northwest of Charing Cross.-History:Hendon was historically a civil parish in the county of Middlesex. The manor is described in Domesday , but the name, 'Hendun' meaning 'at the highest hill', is earlier...
, Middlesex
Middlesex
Middlesex is one of the historic counties of England and the second smallest by area. The low-lying county contained the wealthy and politically independent City of London on its southern boundary and was dominated by it from a very early time...
, England. His father was Raymond Postgate
Raymond Postgate
Raymond William Postgate was an English socialist, journalist and editor, social historian, mystery novelist and gourmet.-Early life:...
; his mother was Daisy Lansbury, making him the cousin of actress Angela Lansbury
Angela Lansbury
Angela Brigid Lansbury CBE is an English actress and singer in theatre, television and motion pictures, whose career has spanned eight decades and earned her more performance Tony Awards than any other individual , with five wins...
and grandson of Labour politician, and sometime leader, George Lansbury
George Lansbury
George Lansbury was a British politician, socialist, Christian pacifist and newspaper editor. He was a Member of Parliament from 1910 to 1912 and from 1922 to 1940, and leader of the Labour Party from 1932 to 1935....
. His other grandfather was the Latin classicist John Percival Postgate
John Percival Postgate
John Percival Postgate was an English classicist, professor of Latin at the University of Liverpool from 1909 to 1920....
.
Education
Postgate was educated at the private Woodstock School on Golders Green Road in FinchleyFinchley
Finchley is a district in Barnet in north London, England. Finchley is on high ground, about north of Charing Cross. It formed an ancient parish in the county of Middlesex, becoming a municipal borough in 1933, and has formed part of Greater London since 1965...
in north-west London and Woodhouse Secondary School, formerly known from 1923 onwards as Woodhouse Grammar School, also in Finchley (and now renamed Woodhouse College
Woodhouse College
Woodhouse College is a single site state sixth form college situated between North Finchley and Friern Barnet on the eastern side of the London Borough of Barnet...
), followed by Dartington Hall School, a progressive private boarding school in Devon
Devon
Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...
.
Life and career
Postgate wanted to attend drama schoolDrama school
A drama school or theatre school is an undergraduate and/or graduate school or department at a college or university; or a free-standing institution ; which specialises in the pre-professional training in drama and theatre arts, such as acting, design and technical theatre, arts administration, and...
, but in 1943, when he became liable for military service in World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he declared himself, like his father, a conscientious objector
Conscientious objector
A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, and/or religion....
, but was initially refused recognition; he accepted a medical examination as a first step to call up, and then reported for duty with the Army in Windsor
Windsor, Berkshire
Windsor is an affluent suburban town and unparished area in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. It is widely known as the site of Windsor Castle, one of the official residences of the British Royal Family....
, but refused to put on the uniform. He was court-martialled and sentenced to three months in Feltham Prison. This qualified him to return to the Appellate Tribunal, where he was granted exemption conditional upon working on the land or in social service, the unserved portion of his sentence being remitted. He worked on farms until the end of the war, when he went to occupied Germany, working for the Red Cross in social relief work.
Career
On return to the UK, from 1948 he attended drama school, but drifted through a number of different jobs, never really finding his niche.In 1957 he was appointed a stage manager with Associated-Rediffusion
Associated-Rediffusion
Associated-Rediffusion, later Rediffusion, London, was the British ITV contractor for London and parts of the surrounding counties, on weekdays between 1954 and 29 July 1968. Transmissions started on 22 September 1955.-Formation:...
, which then held the ITV franchise for London. Attached to the children's programming section, he thought he could do better with the relatively low budgets of the then black and white television productions. Postgate wrote Alexander the Mouse, a story about a mouse
Mouse
A mouse is a small mammal belonging to the order of rodents. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse . It is also a popular pet. In some places, certain kinds of field mice are also common. This rodent is eaten by large birds such as hawks and eagles...
born to be king
King
- Centers of population :* King, Ontario, CanadaIn USA:* King, Indiana* King, North Carolina* King, Lincoln County, Wisconsin* King, Waupaca County, Wisconsin* King County, Washington- Moving-image works :Television:...
. Using an Irish-produced magnetic system – on which animated characters were attached to a painted background, and then photographed through a 45 degree mirror – he persuaded Peter Firmin
Peter Firmin
Peter Arthur Firmin is an English artist and animator. He was the founder of Smallfilms, along with Oliver Postgate. Between them they created a number of popular children's TV programmes, The Saga of Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, Clangers, Bagpuss and Pogles' Wood.-Early life:He trained at...
, who was then teaching at the Central School of Art, 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 restrictions of using magnets.
After the success of Alexander the Mouse, Postgate agreed a deal to make the next series on film, for a budget of £175 per programme. Making a stop motion
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
animation table in his bedroom, he wrote the Chinese story The Journey of Master Ho. This was intended for deaf children, a distinct advantage in that the production required no soundtrack
Soundtrack
A soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
which reduced the production costs. He engaged an honorary Chinese painter to produce the backgrounds, but as the painter was classical Chinese-trained he produced them in three-quarters view
Perspective (graphical)
Perspective in the graphic arts, such as drawing, is an approximate representation, on a flat surface , of an image as it is seen by the eye...
, rather than in the conventional Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
ian full-view manner used for flat animation under a camera. This resulted in the Firmin-produced characters looking as though they were short in one leg, but the success of the production provided the foundation for Postgate with Firmin to start up his own company solely producing animated children's programmes.
Smallfilms
Setting up their business in a disused cowshed at Firmin's home in BleanBlean
Blean is located in the Canterbury district of Kent, England. It is the name of the civil parish as well as the village within it: the latter is scattered along the road between Canterbury and Whitstable, in the middle of what was once the extensive Forest of Blean.The village name of Blean is...
near Canterbury
Canterbury
Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....
, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
, Postgate and Firmin worked on children's animation
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
programmes. Based on concepts which mostly originated with Postgate, Firmin did the artwork and built the models, while Postgate wrote the scripts, did the stop motion
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
filming and many of the voices. Smallfilms
Smallfilms
Smallfilms was a British company that made animated television programmes for children, from 1959 to the 1980s. It was a partnership between Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin . Several very popular series of short films were made using stop-motion animation, including The Clangers, Noggin the Nog,...
was therefore able to produce two minutes of film per day, ten times as much as a conventional animation studio, with Postgate moving the cardboard pieces himself, and working his 16mm camera frame-by-frame with a home-made clicker. As Postgate wholly voiced many of the productions, including the WereBear
WereBear
The WereBears were a series of teddy bears released in 1983 in the United Kingdom. They were created by a man named George Nicholas, a famous children's author, so that boys could have teddy bears without worrying about being bullied.-History:...
story tapes, his distinctive voice became familiar to generations of children.
They started in 1959 with Ivor the Engine, a series for ITV about a Welsh steam locomotive
Steam locomotive
A steam locomotive is a railway locomotive that produces its power through a steam engine. These locomotives are fueled by burning some combustible material, usually coal, wood or oil, to produce steam in a boiler, which drives the steam engine...
who wanted to sing in a choir. Based on Postgate's wartime encounter with Welshman Denzyl Ellis, who used to be the fireman on the Royal Scot, it was remade in colour for the BBC in 1976 and 1977. This was followed by Noggin the Nog for the BBC, which established Smallfilms as a reliable source to produce children's entertainment, when there were only two television channels in the UK. Postgate later described the "gentlemanly and rather innocent" business thus:
Postgate had strict views on story line development, which perhaps resultantly restricted the length of each particular series development. When asked if the Clangers adventures were quite surreal sometimes, Postgate replied:
Other activities
In the 1970s and 1980s Postgate was active in the anti-nuclear campaign, addressing meetings and writing several pamphlets including The Writing on the Sky.In 1986, in collaboration with the historian Naomi Linnell, Postgate painted a 50 feet (15.2 m) Illumination of the Life and Death of Thomas Becket
Thomas Becket
Thomas Becket was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1162 until his murder in 1170. He is venerated as a saint and martyr by both the Roman Catholic Church and the Anglican Communion...
for a book of the same name, which is now in the archive of the Royal Museum and Art Gallery
Royal Museum and Art Gallery
The Royal Museum and Art Gallery, known locally as the Beaney Institute or The Beaney, is the central museum, library and art gallery of the city of Canterbury, Kent, England...
, Canterbury. In 1990 he painted a similar work on Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an explorer, colonizer, and navigator, born in the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy. Under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain, he completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean that led to general European awareness of the American continents in the...
for a book entitled The Triumphant Failure. A Canterbury Chronicle, a triptych
Triptych
A triptych , from tri-= "three" + ptysso= "to fold") is a work of art which is divided into three sections, or three carved panels which are hinged together and can be folded shut or displayed open. It is therefore a type of polyptych, the term for all multi-panel works...
by Postgate commissioned in 1990 hangs in the Great Hall of Eliot College
Eliot College, Kent
Eliot College is the oldest college of the University of Kent. It was established in 1965, the same year the university opened.-Namesake:The college is named after T. S. Eliot, the poet who died on January 4, 1965, the same day the university was formally established...
on the University of Kent
University of Kent
The University of Kent, previously the University of Kent at Canterbury, is a public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom...
's Canterbury
Canterbury
Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....
campus.
Postgate narrated the six-part BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
comedy series Elastic Planet
Elastic Planet
Elastic Planet is a six-part radio comedy series first broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1995. In the style of a very surreal documentary, it was written by Ben Moor, narrated by Oliver Postgate and produced by Jon Naismith....
in 1995.
In his later years, he blogged for the New Statesman
New Statesman
New Statesman is a British centre-left political and cultural magazine published weekly in London. Founded in 1913, and connected with leading members of the Fabian Society, the magazine reached a circulation peak in the late 1960s....
. Postgate's voice was heard once more in 2003, as narrator for Alchemists of Sound, a television documentary about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop
BBC Radiophonic Workshop
The BBC Radiophonic Workshop, one of the sound effects units of the BBC, was created in 1958 to produce effects and new music for radio, and was closed in March 1998, although much of its traditional work had already been outsourced by 1995. It was based in the BBC's Maida Vale Studios in Delaware...
. On 15 July 2007, he was guest on BBC Radio 4's
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...
Desert Island Discs
Desert Island Discs
Desert Island Discs is a BBC Radio 4 programme first broadcast on 29 January 1942. It is the second longest-running radio programme , and is the longest-running factual programme in the history of radio...
.
In 1987 the University of Kent at Canterbury
University of Kent
The University of Kent, previously the University of Kent at Canterbury, is a public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom...
awarded an honorary degree
Honorary degree
An honorary degree or a degree honoris causa is an academic degree for which a university has waived the usual requirements, such as matriculation, residence, study, and the passing of examinations...
to Postgate, who stated that the degree was really intended for Bagpuss
Bagpuss
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"...
, who was subsequently displayed in academic dress.
Personal life
Postgate married Prudence Myers in 1957, becoming stepfather to her three children (Kevan, Kerris and Krispian). The couple had twins in 1959 (Stephen and Simon); and another son in 1964 (Daniel). Prudence died in 1982. Naomi Linnell was his partner for the last twenty three years of his life.His autobiography, Seeing Things, was published in 2000.
Death
Postgate died at a nursing homeNursing home
A nursing home, convalescent home, skilled nursing unit , care home, rest home, or old people's home provides a type of care of residents: it is a place of residence for people who require constant nursing care and have significant deficiencies with activities of daily living...
in Broadstairs
Broadstairs
Broadstairs is a coastal town on the Isle of Thanet in the Thanet district of east Kent, England, about south-east of London. It is part of the civil parish of Broadstairs and St Peter's, which includes St. Peter's and had a population in 2001 of about 24,000. Situated between Margate and...
, near his home on the Kent coast, on 8 December 2008, aged 83.
After his death there was huge recognition of his influence and effect on British culture, and affection for the role his work had played in many people's lives. His work was widely discussed in the UK media and many tributes were paid to him and his work across the internet. Charlie Brooker
Charlie Brooker
Charlton "Charlie" Brooker is a British journalist, comic writer and broadcaster. His style of humour is savage and profane, with surreal elements and a consistent satirical pessimism...
dedicated a portion of his Screenwipe
Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe
Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe is a British television review programme broadcast on BBC Four by Charlie Brooker. The programme contains reviews of current shows, as well as stories and commentary on how television is produced.-Format:...
show to Oliver Postgate, and the way he influenced his own childhood, on an episode that was to be broadcast the day after Postgate's death.
Publications
- The Burglarproof Bath Plug- A Collection of Memories, Thoughts and Small Stories Including "The Trouble with Magic, Oliver Postgate 2008 forward by Stephen Fry ISBN 978-1903708279
- Seeing Things: An Autobiography, Oliver Postgate; illustrated by Peter Firmin, 2000 - ISBN 0-330-39000-7; republished in 2009 - ISBN 978-184-767840-9
- 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 Triumphant Failure, Oliver Postgate & Naomi Linnell 1991 ISBN 0-86272-738-3
- The Sagas of Noggin the Nog Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin; illustrated by Peter Firmin, 2001 - ISBN 978-1903708224