The Complete Bagpuss Guide cont....

Mad, Bad and Utterly Bizarre Moments : How about the very first episode where in Bagpuss' story where we see illustrations of topless mermaids, complete with graphically drawn pink nipples! Bagpuss then tells the tale of him and his fellow cats in a bar with a topless mermaid (no word of a lie!) and claims "she sat on my lap". What is this, Bagpuss or a hard-core porno? Where's Mary Whitehouse when you need her?
The second episode, The Owls of Athens, is also quite poor, acting as a showcase for Madeleine's singing "talents". Like Joan Baez on Mogadons, this boring doll trills away with her folk songs for what seems like a millennia.

Joan Baez on Mogadons The Stuffed Owls of Athens
The Hamish (quite a popular episode judging by the poll, but my personal least favourite) contains unfortunate racial stereotyping that firmly dates it back into the 70s. While Ivor The Engine was made to take the p*** out of Welsh people (and nothing wrong with that), this episode gives us the tale of "Tavish McTavish", the bagpipe-playing Scotsman that spends every evening drinking alcohol. (Look for the barrel of "True Scotch Mist") Also evident is a family of "rich Arabs" driving a big flash car.
Production on these episodes was consistent across the board, though look out for Oliver Postgate's voice in The Old Man's Beard. Note how several times during the story his voice slips out of "Bagpuss" and into his normal "narrator's voice".



Innovation : Bagpuss was, of course, a very innovative programme for its time, and a lot more knowing than many of the programmes today. If you don't know irony, then here's a quick taster. The Chuckle Brothers - hilarious masters of post-modern self-referentiality. Mike and Angelo - complete crap. You see the difference? You thought this was just kid's tv here? Look again at The Fiddle. In many ways what seems like a bog-standard episode of Bagpuss is actually the most innovative of all. For the only time one of Bagpuss' "stories" (a cat who's a professional bullsh***er?) is actually demonstrated by "real-life" footage. Instead of a cartoon, we discover that Bagpuss at some time travelled to the West of Ireland and met a leprechaun. This is all demonstrated by use of the actual puppet, rather than a series of still paintings. Even more unique, this becomes a story-within-a-story as the leprechaun asks Bagpuss to think of another tale. Where was Emily while her beloved Bagpuss was abroad on his holidays? But the most fascinating segment of all is the single example of post-modernism in the series. When Yaffle scoffs that leprechauns are mythical creatures, Gabriel retorts "Well, perhaps we aren't real, either."
No? well what about the use of the screen in the "Marvellous Mechanical Mouseorgan" to show pictures - over 20 years before the Tellytubbies? Then Douglas Adams wrote in the fourth Hitch-Hiker book of a man who had his house inside-out. Uncle Feedle, made some ten years earlier, has an inside-out house. Coincidence? Or in The Mouse Mill Madeleine, Yaffle, Gabriel and the Mice prove that they are aware of their own symbiotic existence - they rush to place the mill back in the window before an exhausted Bagpuss falls asleep, meaning they will become lifeless, too!