How to Be Indoors According to "Play School"

 I doubt Play School could have afforded an outdoor set like Sesame Street's even if it had wanted one, but rewatching the episode below it's interesting to note how different the focus of the UK's pre-school telly flagship was to that of America's. While Sesame Street excelled at showing you how to exist with others, Play School showed you how to be by yourself. I think these two were my two Play School presenters as well. My generation has so much to thank Derek Griffiths for: his music for Bod was a conscious introduction to the joys of jazz and his physical comedy was similarly freeing, teaching us all to embrace wobbliness like noone was watching. It's only rewatching this though that I remembered Chloe Ashcroft was also my favourite. She taught stillness, and listening. There's no trace of self consciousness to her banging on some tins, so when she breaks off to ask "But how did the music of the world begin?" it's a surprising segue, sure, but we're braced for surprises. So before I ever went to school I think I'd already learnt from these two how to play both comedy and drama respectively. I know Bagpuss gets all the praise, but you really can't beat paying attention to actual people, and Derek and Chloe reward that attention so well. What a great piece of theatre this is.

"Sticks of different lengths!"

But Emily scared me...

(originally posted on myspace here)

 

 

... and looking over this opening again I think I can see why. It was the smile. I thought it was evil. And she looked like a ghost. Also I was a terrible racist until I was about five - all Asians looked to me like evil wizards - and I thought Emily looked Asian. Regional accents disturbed me as well so "Ivor the Engine" never really got a look in either, particularly those dragons (and nor did "Why Don't You?"). And they didn't show The Clangers when I was a toddler, which I think I would have loved (even though it wouldn't have made me laugh, like "Chorlton and the Wheelies") let alone Noggin the Nog - I must have missed those both by a few years - so what I'm saying is that Oliver Postgate's influence only really began to work on me when I became a teenager.

And I'm saying this because of course Oliver Postgate is now dead.

And that I should only love Smallfilms' output now - REALLY love them - makes perfect sense to me. Look at Bagpuss or Ivor, there's an inbuilt nostalgia. And I trust nostalgia. Perhaps that is the wrong word. I trust stuff that is old, and handmade. Such stuff has earned my trust, and the worlds built by Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin in their magically non-magic shed are timeless, and chiefly responsible. So I should mark his passing somehow, definitely, and I'll do it by posting this link to Chris Goode's own excellent tribute here. It includes a recording of perhaps the last story Postgate ever told, the introduction to "Hippo World Guestbook", and praise for Postgate's own blog which is also well worth a look if you're interested (it's political, in a good way... ie it has a moral). Enjoy, all interested parties.

I just hope Brian Trueman doesn't die now.