Bagpuss' Oliver Postgate began with programmes for deaf children
Children's favourite Oliver Postgate, creator of The Clangers and Bagpuss has died at the age of 83.
As the narrator to all of his films, Mr Postgate's voice is familiar to generations of British children. Although only 13 episodes of Bagpuss were made, the pink saggy old cloth cat was regularly screened for years and remains fondly remembered.
However, one of Postgate's first recordings was 'The Journey of Master Ho', an animated series of silent films about a boy and a water buffalo, designed for hearing-impaired youngsters.
Despite his adult-sounding cognomen, Master Ho was a small but feisty Chinese boy. His various adventures were played out in pantomime, with occasional sign-language interludes. Distributed by Oliver Postgate's own Smallfilms, The Journey of Master Ho was syndicated regionally in the UK, beginning in 1958.
Speaking about the programmes, Postgate said: "It had the great advantage that it had no soundtrack. It was a Chinese story and I knew a young man who was an honorary Chinese painter, so he would do the backgrounds for me. But he didn’t understand that flat animation under a camera had to move dead sideways in the Egyptian manner, not in the Chinese manner of seeing thing in three-quarters view, so that when I had to move them flat across the background they all looked as if they had one short leg! But it seemed to work alright, and it was tremendously exciting as a job, I enjoyed it enormously.”
