40 Fun Facts About Bagpuss

Bagpuss was dyed pink by mistake; which colour did Peter Firmin intend the cloth cat to be?

Ginger was the plan: a dyeing firm in Folkestone got the cloth wrong and it came back pink and cream. Peter Firmin later called the error the best thing that ever happened.

In Bagpuss, the mice claim their toy mill turns breadcrumbs and butterbeans into which treat?

Chocolate biscuits roll out of the mill, but it is a trick. Professor Yaffle looks round the back and finds the mice wheeling the same ones through again and again.

Which band's 2003 single There There takes its subtitle from a song in the children's series Bagpuss?

Radiohead's Thom Yorke even asked Oliver Postgate to make the video for the single. Postgate, by then retired, turned the job down.

Professor Yaffle, the dry academic of Bagpuss, is said to have been modelled on which philosopher?

Bertrand Russell, winner of the 1950 Nobel Prize in Literature, is the model usually named for the fact-loving bookend who is forever finding fault with the mice.

Peter Firmin, who built the puppets for Bagpuss, also designed which glove puppet known for a posh voice?

Basil Brush takes his surname from the real fox tail Firmin used for the first puppet in 1962. Brush is the traditional name for a fox's tail.

Oliver Postgate, the writer and narrator of Bagpuss, was a cousin of which British-born Hollywood actress?

Angela Lansbury, later famous as the sleuth Jessica Fletcher, was his cousin through his mother Daisy, a daughter of the Labour leader George Lansbury.

Bagpuss topped a 1999 BBC poll of favourite children's shows despite having how many episodes?

13 episodes were all that was ever made, first shown in 1974. Repeats kept the old cloth cat on British screens for more than a decade afterwards.

In Bagpuss, the pompous Professor Yaffle is a carved bookend in the shape of which bird?

Woodpecker is hidden in his name: yaffle is another name for the European green woodpecker, the bird the character was loosely based on.

Which animal is Gabriel, the singer who performs with Madeleine in Bagpuss from on top of a can?

Toad is right, and a real one inspired him: it lived in the basement of the flat that Peter and Joan Firmin once rented in Twickenham, beside the Thames.

In 2014, Bagpuss featured in a set of twelve of which items honouring classic children's television?

Postage stamps issued by Royal Mail in January 2014 put the pink cat among a dozen favourites from British children's television.

In Bagpuss, which kind of toy is Madeleine, who sits in a wicker chair and helps tell the stories?

Rag doll Madeleine was made by Joan Firmin, Peter Firmin's wife, who sewed a new version for the series when Oliver Postgate asked for her as a character.

In Bagpuss, Emily takes the lost things she finds to which kind of place, where nothing is ever sold?

A shop, though an odd one: Emily has each find mended and put in the window so that whoever lost it can come in and claim it.

What does Bagpuss do at the end of every episode that turns all his toy friends back into ornaments?

Falls asleep is the rule of the magic: the toys only come alive while the cat is awake, so one big yawn turns Madeleine and Gabriel back into ordinary dolls.

Emily, the girl who wakes Bagpuss with a rhyme, is dressed and presented as a child of which era?

Victorian Emily was played by Emily Firmin, the young daughter of the show's co-creator Peter Firmin, and the scene is set around the turn of the 20th century.

Which instrument does Gabriel play to accompany the songs and stories in the children's series Bagpuss?

Banjo is his instrument, and Gabriel strums it for songs such as The Bony King of Nowhere, about a king in need of a cushion.

Which other series by the makers of Bagpuss features pink whistling creatures and a Soup Dragon?

Clangers arrived in 1969 after the BBC asked for a colour series, and with space exploration in the news Oliver Postgate decided to set it on a small planet.

Each episode of Bagpuss opens with still photographs of Emily shown in which old-fashioned tone?

Sepia gives way to full colour the moment the cat wakes. One of the opening pictures is a real 1898 view of the village of Horrabridge in Devon.

Gabriel in Bagpuss was named after Walter Gabriel, a character in which long-running British radio soap?

The Archers has been on air since 1951 and is the world's longest-running drama. The puppet himself was first made for Peter Firmin's earlier show The Musical Box.

In the Bagpuss episode The Fiddle, Gabriel says the music comes from which creature of Irish legend?

Leprechaun is Gabriel's guess, but when the mice tip over the smoking bucket they find only a tiny fiddle, which then seems to play Charlie Mouse rather than the other way round.

The makers of Bagpuss started out in 1959 with which series about a Welsh steam locomotive?

Ivor the Engine longs to sing in a choir. Oliver Postgate was inspired by a Welsh railwayman who told him how steam locomotives seemed to come alive each morning.

Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin made Bagpuss through which two-man production company?

Smallfilms could turn out two minutes of finished film a day, far more than a conventional animation studio, with Postgate moving every figure himself.

Gabriel in Bagpuss was worked live through a hole in his can, while the other toys used which technique?

Stop-motion would have made his singing scenes painfully slow to film, so Peter Firmin built a mechanism to work him in real time.

Why did the BBC reject Professor Bogwood, a man in a top hat first planned as the scholar of Bagpuss?

Too frightening was the verdict on the figure carved from black Irish bog-wood. The BBC asked for a non-human instead, which is how a bird got the job.

The mice of Bagpuss are carvings on the side of which mechanical instrument?

Organ is right: the Marvellous Mechanical Mouse Organ plays rolls of music and projects pictures onto a screen, and its six mice sing as they work.

Why was Oliver Postgate, later the creator of Bagpuss, sent to prison during the Second World War?

Refusing army service as a conscientious objector, as his father had in the First World War, he later worked on farms and then for the Red Cross in occupied Germany.

In the first episode of Bagpuss, the splinters of wood that Emily finds turn out to be which object?

A ship in a bottle is Professor Yaffle's verdict, and the model is magically rebuilt with the help of a nursery rhyme and a poem about mermaids.

The mice in Bagpuss climb into an old ballet shoe and use feathers to pretend it is what?

A rowing boat is Charlie Mouse's idea, with feathers for oars. The mice later mend the shoe until it is fit for a prima ballerina.

The original Bagpuss went on show at the Beaney House of Art and Knowledge, a museum in which English city?

Canterbury lies close to the farm at Blean where the series was filmed, and in 2011 the city gave Peter Firmin its freedom in recognition of his work.

Which Viking-age saga by the makers of Bagpuss has characters inspired by the Lewis chessmen?

Noggin the Nog is said to owe his name to Neasden: Peter Firmin saw the station sign on the London Underground and it made him think of the word.

The makers of Bagpuss set up their film studio on a farm in which kind of disused building?

Cowshed turned film studio, it stood at Peter Firmin's home in Blean and was later replaced by a row of converted pigsties.

Which singer voiced Madeleine in Bagpuss and wrote the show's music with John Faulkner?

Sandra Kerr took the songs back on the road in 2002 and 2005, touring a stage show with Faulkner, her daughter Nancy and Nancy's husband James Fagan.

Madeleine in Bagpuss began as a long-skirted doll that Joan Firmin made to hold which items?

Nightdresses went inside the original, which Joan sewed for the Firmin children. Oliver Postgate then asked her to make a new version to be one of the characters.

Royalties from Bagpuss paid for a children's hospice wing that opened in 2002 in which country?

Romania is home to the Bagpuss Children's Wing in Brasov, run by the charity Hospices of Hope and funded entirely by Oliver Postgate from his BBC royalties.

The original Bagpuss was long displayed in a museum named after which other children's character?

Rupert Bear shared his museum with the cloth cat until it closed at the end of 2017, when the two old favourites moved on together to a new home.

In the Bagpuss story The Owls of Athens, who punishes the greedy owls by taking away their singing voices?

The moon silences them in Madeleine's tale. It begins when the mice clean a filthy old rag and uncover a cushion cover with an owl on it.

In Bagpuss, the tartan object called the Hamish turns out to be a pincushion shaped like which animal?

Porcupine is Professor Yaffle's answer, a porcupine without any spikes, so the friends stick pins into it to finish the job.

In the Bagpuss story of the Wise Man of Ling-Po, which animals pile up under the water as stepping stones?

Turtles repay the wise man for defending them from the local people, who catch them for soup and laugh at him when he breaks down his own bridge.

In Bagpuss, the tangled plant called old man's beard leads Charlie Mouse to demonstrate which craft?

Weaving is shown by Charlie Mouse acting as the shuttle himself, after a tale of old men who cut off their beards to sell to carpet-makers.

In the Bagpuss episode Flying, the mice try to build a flying machine out of which object?

A basket and some oriental fans make the machine, and the mice fool Professor Yaffle into thinking it flies by hoisting it on a piece of string.

The mice in Bagpuss sing as they mend things to a tune adapted from which medieval English round?

Sumer Is Icumen In was written down in the 1260s and is one of the oldest known songs written in English. It is also called the Cuckoo Song.