40 Fun Facts About Clangers

According to their creator, what were the Clangers really doing in their scripted, whistled lines?

Swearing, he said: the BBC rang to object to a rude line Major Clanger whistles at a stuck door. Each whistle followed the rhythm of a script written in English.

Which Clangers character gave its name to the Scottish band behind the 1990 hit I'm Free?

The Soup Dragon lent her name to The Soup Dragons, formed in Bellshill in 1985. On screen she fills the Clangers' jug from wells deep inside their planet.

Which Monty Python member took over as narrator when Clangers returned to British TV in 2015?

Michael Palin stepped in because the original narrator had died in 2008. He has named the grumpy Major Clanger as one of his favourite characters.

What household metal objects cover the Clangers' crater burrows as shields against meteorites?

Dustbin lids are said to have given the Clangers their name, from the clang one makes when a creature opens its burrow.

Which handicraft did Joan Firmin use to make the bodies of the original Clangers puppets?

Knitting in pink wool was the job of Joan Firmin, whose husband Peter designed the characters. The show's writer said they are pink simply because that was the colour of her wool.

Which instrument, also played for laughs on radio's I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue, voiced the Clangers?

Swanee whistle notes became as recognisable as the characters themselves. Two players blew every line: the show's narrator and Stephen Sylvester.

Which Doctor Who villain watches Clangers on a prison television in the serial The Sea Devils?

The Master jokes, deadpan, that the Clangers are real extraterrestrials, and his jailer patiently explains that they are only a children's show.

Which Clangers puppet, the family's keen gardener, was stolen in the 1970s and returned in 2026?

Mother Clanger lay in an attic in Ireland for five decades after two 15-year-old boys took her from a London exhibition. One confessed before his death, and she went back on museum display.

Which body part did the Moonmouse lose when it was redesigned to become the Clangers?

Tail removal was the one big change made to the Moonmouse of a 1967 children's book. The reason given was that it kept getting into the soup.

Which Star Trek actor narrates the American version of the revived Clangers series?

William Shatner was chosen in 2015 to narrate for US viewers, after an American pre-school channel co-funded the revival with the BBC.

Who wrote, animated and narrated the original Clangers in a soft, melodic voice from 1969?

Oliver Postgate also shot every frame himself, moving the puppets by hand and working his 16 mm camera with a home-made clicker.

Which other series by the makers of Clangers topped a 1999 BBC poll of favourite children's shows?

Bagpuss ran for only thirteen episodes in 1974, yet topped the poll 25 years later. The girl in its opening sequence is a daughter of the Clangers' designer.

Which oddly named dish do the Clangers eat alongside the soup drawn from inside their planet?

Blue string pudding supplements the soup that is the main part of the Clangers' diet. Their creator described them simply as a family in space, at peace on a small, hollow planet.

Which animation technique from the 1969 original was kept for the 2015 Clangers revival?

Stop-motion puppets stayed, even though the revival of Fireman Sam had swapped the same technique for computer-generated imagery.

Which space mission flew four months before Clangers reached BBC1 with its Moon-like planet?

Apollo 11 put the first people on the Moon in July 1969, and Clangers reached BBC1 that November. Its writer set the new series in space because space travel was the talk of the year.

What colour is the soup that the Clangers collect from volcanic wells inside their planet?

Green soup is no place for visitors: a startled astronaut once fell head-first into one of the wells and had to be scrubbed clean.

Which BBC channel brought Clangers back with a new series in 2015?

CBeebies ordered 52 new episodes for 2015, twice as many as the two original series together, then renewed the revival for 26 more.

Near which English cathedral city was Clangers filmed, in an outbuilding at Peter Firmin's home?

Canterbury lies close to the village of Blean, where the studio was a disused cowshed. The city's Beaney museum now displays the original puppets.

The BBC asked Smallfilms in 1969 to make Clangers as a new series for which television advance?

Colour pictures were a first for Smallfilms, whose every earlier series had been shot in black and white. The BBC left the storyline entirely to the film-makers.

Which Smallfilms saga about a Viking-age king first featured the Moonmouse behind the Clangers?

Noggin the Nog's town received the visitor in a 1967 reading book, when a little spherical spacecraft splash-landed in its new horse-trough.

Which series about a Welsh steam locomotive shares its composer, Vernon Elliott, with Clangers?

Ivor the Engine came first, in 1959, as the Smallfilms company's debut production. Its hero dreams of singing in a choir.

Which woodwind instrument, played by composer Vernon Elliott, carries much of the Clangers score?

Bassoon was the instrument Elliott taught in London for over 40 years. For Clangers he turned hand-drawn musical sketches and graphs from the show's writer into a full score.

Which construction toy was used to model the Clangers' bird-like friend who nests in orbit?

Meccano pieces found lying around the Smallfilms studio were put together to make the Iron Chicken.

What do the Froglets, the Clangers' three small orange aliens, travel around in?

A top hat carries the trio, who have black stalk-like legs and large eyes. In their first episode they hop out of it and scatter across the planet.

Which toy figure did the Clangers grow larger to appear beside in the episode The Rock Collector?

Action Man was brought in as a model figure for the story, so the designer enlarged the Clangers between the first and last episodes to match.

Which plants on the Clangers' planet bear note-shaped fruit that the family politely asks to pick?

Music Trees drop some of their notes on the ground once asked, a hint that they can think for themselves. The Clangers have even set the notes on a five-line staff.

Which award for Pre-School Animation did the revived Clangers win in its first year back, 2015?

A Children's BAFTA came one year after the designer of the original puppets received a Special Award from the same academy for his contribution to children's media.

Which American pre-school channel co-funded the revived Clangers and aired it with its own narrator?

Sprout, a subsidiary of NBCUniversal, commissioned the series in tandem with the BBC and showed it across North America.

Which Tony-winning musical was co-written by John Du Prez, composer for the revived Clangers?

Spamalot, written with Eric Idle, won the 2005 Tony Award for Best Musical. Du Prez's long work with Monty Python links him to the revival's British narrator, a member of the troupe.

Which organisation released the long-missing Clangers special Vote for Froglet free online in 2017?

The BFI, the British Film Institute, put the seven-minute film out to coincide with that year's general election. Its maker had said in 2005 that he was not sure it still existed.

Which outdoor sound crept onto Clangers recordings made in a village hall with the windows open?

Birdsong drifted in while the composer and a small band, dubbed the Clangers Ensemble, played instruments including harp, clarinet and glockenspiel.

In the 1967 story behind Clangers, the Moonmouse fuels its ship with soap-flakes and which liquid?

Vinegar and soap-flakes filled the tank, and the ship took off in a dreadful-smelling cloud that covered the town with bubbles.

Which famous glove puppet did Peter Firmin, the Clangers' designer, make in 1962 for an ITV series?

Basil Brush was first made using a real fox brush, the proper name for the bushy end of a fox, and that gave the character his surname.

Which London-born Hollywood star was a cousin of the creator and original narrator of Clangers?

Angela Lansbury, later the star of Murder, She Wrote, shared a grandfather with him: George Lansbury, who led the Labour Party in the 1930s.

What relation to the original Clangers narrator is Daniel, a main writer of the 2015 revival?

Son Daniel inherited the Smallfilms company in 2008 and also voiced the Iron Chicken in the new episodes.

Peter Firmin joked that the Clangers' surreal ideas were fuelled by cups of tea and which snack?

Biscuits and tea were his answer to people who assumed the show's writer must be on hallucinogenic drugs. The writer himself called the stories surreal but logical.

What garment did the Moonmouse, forerunner of the Clangers, wear in its 1967 storybook debut?

A duffel coat was the outfit of the largish, mouse-like creature who unscrewed the top of a crashed spacecraft and climbed out looking for fuel.

What wartime stand saw the future creator of Clangers court-martialled and jailed in the 1940s?

Conscientious objection earned him a three-month sentence in Feltham Prison after he reported to the Army but refused to put on the uniform. He then worked on farms until the war ended.

How do the Clangers really communicate in the vacuum of space, according to the show's makers?

Magnetic resonance of a nuclear kind is the official answer, since sound cannot cross a vacuum. The familiar noises are only a translation for the human audience.

How do the Clangers rescue the astronaut who runs himself into orbit around their planet?

A fishing rod and a magnet reel the panicking visitor back in. He had already tumbled down a hole into the planet, and the Clangers finally bundle him into his spacecraft and send him home.