25 Facts About Oliver Postgate

Richard Oliver Postgate was an English animator, puppeteer, and writer.

Oliver Postgate was the creator and writer of some of Britain's most popular children's television programmes.

Oliver Postgate's brother was the microbiologist and writer John Postgate FRS.

Oliver Postgate was educated at the private Woodstock School on Golders Green Road in Finchley in northwest London and Woodhouse Secondary School, formerly known from 1923 onwards as Woodhouse Grammar School, in Finchley, followed by Dartington Hall School, a progressive private boarding school in Devon.

Oliver Postgate joined the Home Guard in 1942 while studying at the Kingston School of Art, but when he became liable for military service during the Second World War the following year, he declared himself a conscientious objector, as his father had done during the First World War.

Oliver Postgate was initially refused recognition; he accepted a medical examination as a first step to call up, and then reported for duty with the Army in Windsor, but refused to put on the uniform.

Oliver Postgate was court-martialled and sentenced to three months in Feltham Prison.

Oliver Postgate worked on farms until the end of the war, when he went to occupied Germany, working for the Red Cross in social relief work.

Oliver Postgate wrote Alexander the Mouse, a story about a mouse born to be king.

Oliver Postgate later recalled they undertook around 26 of these programmes live-to-air, which were made harder by the production problems encountered by the use and restrictions of using magnets.

Oliver Postgate engaged an honorary Chinese painter to produce the backgrounds, but as the painter was classical Chinese-trained he produced them in three-quarters view, rather than in the conventional Egyptian full-view manner used for flat animation under a camera.

Smallfilms was therefore able to produce two minutes of film per day, ten times as much as a conventional animation studio, with Oliver Postgate moving the cardboard pieces himself, and working his 16 mm camera frame-by-frame with a home-made clicker.

Oliver Postgate later described the "gentlemanly and rather innocent" business thus:.

Oliver Postgate had strict views on story-line development, which perhaps resultantly restricted the length of each particular series development.

In 1986, in collaboration with the historian Naomi Linnell, Oliver Postgate painted a 50-foot-long Illumination of the Life and Death of Thomas Becket for a book of the same name, which is in the archive of the Royal Museum and Art Gallery, Canterbury.

Oliver Postgate narrated the six-part BBC Radio 4 comedy series Elastic Planet in 1995.

Oliver Postgate's voice was heard once more in 2003, as narrator for Alchemists of Sound, a television documentary about the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.

Oliver Postgate was a guest on The Russell Brand Show on 19 January 2008 where he discussed the making of Bagpuss and his subsequent work in TV and Film.

In 1987 the University of Kent at Canterbury awarded an honorary degree to Oliver Postgate, who stated that the degree was really intended for Bagpuss, who was displayed in academic dress.

Oliver Postgate married Prudence "Prue" Myers in 1957, becoming stepfather to her three children.

Oliver Postgate's autobiography, Seeing Things, was published in 2000, and his son Daniel wrote an afterword which was added to the book after his father's death in 2008.

Oliver Postgate's grandfather was Labour Party leader George Lansbury and he was cousin to English born American actress Angela Lansbury.

Oliver Postgate is distantly related to the Australian-born writer and academic Coral Lansbury, whose son Malcolm Turnbull became the 29th Prime Minister of Australia.

Oliver Postgate died at a nursing home in Broadstairs, near his home on the Kent coast, on 8 December 2008, aged 83.

Oliver Postgate's work was widely discussed in the UK media and many tributes were paid to him and his work across the internet.