I didn't become a Bagpuss fan until 1987, when I was writing up my Masters thesis. Watching daytime TV is one of the signs, along with drug/alcohol dependency, that you're in deep trouble. The only time I've ever seen it in recent decades has been in hospital waiting rooms. Is it the trouble that leads to daytime TV, or the daytime TV that gets you into trouble? Epistemologically we can't tell: you can't infer causation from correlation.
One of the things I like about Bagpuss was its economy. Each episode was less than 15 minutes long, and it seemed like almost half of that length was taken up with the open sequence that began, "Once upon a time, not so long ago, there was a little girl. And her name was Emily—" Then it goes on about the shop she had that didn't sell anything. That's all I can do from memory; now let's Google for the full thing: yep, here it is. Then all the animals have to wake up from their lifeless states, one by one. Then you get a little bit of a story. But the story has to wind up a few minutes before the end, as all the animals have to go back to sleep again. As a production company, half your episode is made with one swift copy-and-paste action. You may think The Apprentice is taking the piss with its interminable aerial shots of London, but they've got nothing on Oliver Postgate.
It was always the 'round' songs by the mice from the mouse organ that I liked most — try this example. But Madeleine the rag doll and Gabriel the toad were voiced by folk musicians Sandra Kerr and John Faulkner, and they did the longer songs. When I heard that they were releasing this album in 2000, I ordered it immediately.
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The things you find out on Wikipedia, which may or not be true. A couple of days ago, the Wikipedia entry for Ramblin' Man by Lemon Jelly was claiming that "When listed in the order in which the locations are narrated [in Ramblin' Man], the message "Bagpuss sees all things" is spelt out midway through the song (from Brixton to San José), using the first letter of each location." Now, however, that factlet has been removed and the history page asserts that "the order does not spell a phrase". Am I going to listen to the song to check who is right? Sure, if and when I ever get bored of watching daytime TV.
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