Due to when I was born, I was never in the perfect position to enjoy Noggin the Nog as a child. The final series aired a few months before I was born, and, along with the original 1959 - 65 run, wasn’t repeated on British television again until the early 1990s. Nonetheless, it entered my sphere of interest a few years ago for one simple reason: the dream team of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin.
Two of the cornerstones of classic British children’s television, and indeed British television as a whole, Postgate and Firmin are responsible for some of the most magical memories ingrained in the national consciousness. And, being the marvels that they were, Postgate and Firmin never stopped their universes once their run on television had finished. Instead, they ensured there were expanded universes on offer to continue their gentle magic.
A little while back, I covered one of these ancilliary adventures in the form of Bagpuss on a Rainy Day, and it’s a story which didn’t disappoint, delivering everything a fan of the saggy, old cloth cat could ever want. Naturally, I wanted more of Postgate and Firmin’s output in front of me, and a chance encounter with a ‘community library in a bus stop’ left me the proud owner of Noggin and the Dragon, a story first published in 1966. And now it’s time to turn the pages and look inside.
