Peter Firmin

Today, December 11th 2025 would have been the 97th birthday of artist and puppet maker, Peter Firmin.

Firmin, along with his friend, Oliver Postgate, composers and musicians like Vernon Elliott, Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner and various family members created some of the most enduring and endearing childrens televison programmes from a cowshed at Firmin's home.  Firmin and Postgate through their production company Smallfilms created shows like Ivor the Engine, Noggin the Nog, Pogles' Wood, Clangers & Bagpuss, shows that remained embedded in the popular imagination - entire generations can still imitate the Clanger's swanee whistle speech, Bagpuss' yawn or the sound of Ivor's engine.

Peter Firmin sadly passed in 2018 - Oliver Postage, a decade before in 2008 - but their creations live on.  The video below documents Firmin's receipt of the BAFTA Children's Special Award 2014 and includes a lovely little behind the scenes film of both creators as well as Firmin's speech - where we get to find out how much his daughter Emily was paid for her appearence in Bagpuss.

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Clangers

'Clangers' was a stop-motion puppet animation created in 1969 by (modelmaker and illustrator) Peter Firmin and (writer, animator and narrator) Oliver Postgate's who, through their company, Smallfilms, had previously produced animated shows such as Ivor the Engine, Noggin the Nog (in which a Clanger-like 'Moonmouse' had featured 2 years previously) and Pogle's Wood and who would go on to produce Bagpuss. The Clangers are a small family of pink mouse-like creatures - named Granny, Major, Mother, Tiny and Small Clanger - who live on a small, moon-like planet along with The Soup Dragon (and her baby), The Froglets, The Iron Chicken, The Cloud and The Music Trees.

The Clangers spoke in a musical whistle created by using a slide (or swanee) whistle. Their dialogue however was all scripted and then reproduced through the instruments. This allowed Postgate to be rather more adventurous with the dialogue than the BBC would have maybe liked (if they'd known) with Episode Three, 'Chicken', containing - at 00:55 - the most famous piece of salty Clanger speak, "Oh sod it, the bloody thing's stuck again."

Only 27 episodes (two series and one special) of The Clangers were made but to this day they hold - as does much of Postgate and Firmin's work - a special place in hearts of swathes of Brits who grew up in the 70s and 80s, but their simple charm has rendered them timeless with the revived series (2015-2020) producing a further 106 episodes narrated by Michael Palin (in the UK) and William Shatner (in the US).

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If you enjoy what we do here on Wyrd Britain and would like to help us continue then we would very much welcome a donation towards keeping the blog going - paypal.me/wyrdbritain

Affiliate links are provided for your convenience and to help mitigate running costs.