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The Sagas of Noggin the Nog

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When The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was finally made into a movie a few years ago I was disappointed to find out that the part of The Book was played by Stephen Fry. Bumptious, plummy and ubiquitous, Mr Fry made a poor substitute for the late Peter Jones, who had voiced the role on radio and TV. But then I read an interview with the film’s directors and discovered that they were men of taste and judgement after all, for Stephen Fry had been their second choice: originally they had planned to offer the role to Oliver Postgate.

Mr Postgate, as almost everybody of a certain age in Britain knows, was one of the great narrators. Gentle, whimsical, but never condescending, he sounds like your favourite imaginary uncle, and forty years after first being exposed to his voice I still find myself trying to slip into his rhythms and cadences when I’m reading bedtime stories to Sam. His is the voice of the best kind of children’s storyteller; an adult who is as intrigued by the world he is describing as his listeners are, and whom they can trust to guide them to a happy ending.

The worlds which Mr Postgate created, in the ‘Smallfilms’ television programmes which he made with Peter Firmin during the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s, were the worlds of my childhood, and they’re probably part of most modern childhoods too, since DVDs of Bagpuss, The Clangers and Ivor the Engine are still widely available. I often mention The Clangers when people ask me what my favourite sci-fi films are, and I’m not entirely joking; they had an obvious influence on my Larklight books (the Sophronia almost collides with their small, blue planet in Starcross), and their clattering, Heath Robinson technology may well have helped to spark the interest in odd contraptions which led me eventually to dream up Mortal Engines (a book who’s violence would doubtless have horrified the gentle Mr Postgate). As for Bagpuss, the words, ‘but Emily loved him’ can still move me to tears, and I keep the mouse roundelay on my i-pod. “We will fix it, we will mend it, we will stick it with glue, glue,glue’ never fails to raise a smile, especially if it comes on straight after Desolation Row or the Liebestod from Tristan and Isolde.

But my favourite of all the Smallfilms worlds when I was small myself, and my favourite still now that I’m old, was the world of Noggin the Nog, that gentlest and wisest of norsemen. Unlike the others, the Noggin stories are never shown on TV nowadays, and DVDs are slightly harder to come by, so while old codgers like me may cherish happy memories of them I suspect that few of our children know them.

Each episode of Noggin starts in the same way, with the beautiful, haunting music of Vernon Elliot(who scored Ivor the Engine and The Clangers, too) and with Oliver Postgate’s voice telling us how, “In the Lands of the North, where the black rocks stand guard against the cold sea, in the dark night that is very long, the men of the Northlands sit by their great log fires and they tell a tale...”

And what tales they tell! Tales which unfold in the same wobbly, cardboard-cut-out animation style as Ivor the Engine. Tales of Noggin, the young king of the Nogs, and his wicked Uncle Nogbad, who is forever hatching schemes to do away with him and claim the throne himself. Of Noggin’s voyage ‘beyond the Black Ice at the Edge of the World’ to win the hand of Nooka, princess of the Nooks. Of meetings with the King of the Walruses and the ice-dragon; with the little people called Omruds who live under the hills. Of Noggin’s clever but foolish inventor, Olaf the Lofty, who invents early versions of the car, the flying machine and even dynamite.

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