Bagpuss Description
Each programme would
begin the same way: Through a series of sepia photographs,
we are told of a little girl named Emily (played by Emily
Firmin, the daughter of illustrator Peter Firmin), who owned
a shop. The shop did not sell anything, however - instead,
Emily would find lost and broken things and display them
in the window of the shop, so their owners could one day
come and collect them. She would leave the object in front
of her favourite stuffed toy - the large, saggy, pink and
white striped cat named Bagpuss. She 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 and a rag doll called Madeleine.
The wooden woodpecker bookend became the drily academic
Professor Yaffle (distantly based, it is said, on the philosopher
Bertrand Russell), while the mice carved on the side of
the "mouse organ" (a small mechanical pipe organ
which 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 colour faded to sepia and they all became toys again
