THE death last week of Oliver Postgate, the prolific creator of low-budget children’s television programmes, brought to an end a happy chapter in millions of people’s lives – mine included.

He not only gave us Noggin the Nog, Ivor the Engine, the Clangers, Pogles Wood and Bagpuss, he enriched countless childhoods and helped to mould the adult lives that inevitably followed.

His passing, at the age of 83, was like losing a beloved relative or a dear old family friend. Yet his age was immaterial for he was still a child at heart, even though this eccentric and creative man had long been disillusioned with modern children. He was quoted as saying: ‘I don’t have much time for children nowadays.’ And why? Because, in his opinion, modern childhood had been reduced to yet another ‘market’ at which products could be aimed.

What perception from a man, who during the first three decades of the televised entertainment revolution was so perfectly tuned to a child’s wavelength. His characters were not the product of mind-boggling computer technology or high-tech virtual reality; they were made by Postgate in his garden shed, using recycled everyday ephemera, cardboard and old socks.

The Postgate generations, who grew up to the sound of his calm and friendly voice narrating programmes as he brought his handmade characters to life, were largely unassuming, unsophisticated and untainted by the moral corruption and vulgar consumerism that blights society today.

They didn’t expect parents to bankrupt the household at Christmas and the presents they opened on Christmas morning were more likely to be practical and simple toys, not the wafer-thin laptops, mobile phones and flat-screen high definition televisions that masquerade as toys as the first decade of the 21st century draws to its close.

Childhood, so brief and fleeting, lasted longer in those blue hills remembered and there was less pressure to grow up too soon, or to emulate the vulgar ranks of today’s ‘celebrities’ whose lifestyles are paraded endlessly before us, yet the majority of whom are inappropriate role models for a child to emulate.

Of the many tributes to Postgate posted on the internet, one signed simply ‘Chris in Shropshire,’ summed up the nation’s sentiments. It read: ‘Oliver, on behalf of millions of children of the 60s I thank you, you made my childhood richer with your work and you will be sorely missed.’

On the day he died, I received among the usual daily bundle of internet jokes, virals, chain letters and philosophical messages, a very timely commentary on those born before the suffocating cultures of ‘elf ‘n’ safety’, political correctness and over-protective parenting took the fun and adventure out of childhood.

This e-message congratulated all born between 1920 and 1979 that had somehow managed to survive the multitude of perceived hazards that today make everyday life as dangerous as crossing a minefield. Reading the observations brought back many happy memories of my childhood but it also made me sad for everyone born post 1980.

Such reminiscing made me realise that we now live in a society that seeks to regulate and protect to needless excess, and in the process, undermines the overwhelming majority of human kind’s natural ability and common sense to know what is right and wrong and what is likely to be detrimental to our and our charge’s safety and well-being.

Children are no longer encouraged to push the boundaries and extend their comfort zones; far from it, they are securely fenced in or ferried around the Island in huge, gas guzzling Chelsea tractors that more resemble armoured vehicles than an average family car.

Children from the 1920s to the 1980s knew no fear and grew up to be well-rounded adults because they had the freedom to learn from early on that life is a mixed box of failure and success, narrow scrapes and cuts and bruises. Or, in my particular nasty childhood accident, a rusty, bent nail though a foot, acquired as I jumped off a pile of logs. If you want to succeed then you must take the risks and learn to take life’s inevitable disappointments in your stride. Those who survived the 1920s, 30s and 40s had the toughest start in life. They grew up in the Great Depression and the Second World War, many living in sub-standard housing decorated with lead-based paints and they were educated in schools crammed with asbestos.

They had easy access to a variety of potentially deadly medicines and household-cleaning materials kept in containers without childproof lids. They existed on a diet of white bread, unpasteurised milk, full fat butter, sugar and salt. One piece of fruit a day was a luxury; five was the preserve of the wealthy.

Take-away food was fish and chips fried in good old dripping and wrapped in newspaper and not calorie-laden and additive crammed pizzas, burgers and Kentucky fried chicken that comes in packaging with twice the lifespan of man.

Yet that extraordinary generation laid the foundations for the post-war boom, the welfare state and free education that changed human society more rapidly than any previous era, and they produced in their own offspring, some of the greatest risk-takers, problem solvers and innovators the world has ever seen.
Late-night opening and Sunday trading was unheard off until the 1970s yet no one died of starvation because shops closed at 6 pm. Moreover, who needed Play Stations, Nintendos, videogames and more television channels than anyone could ever possibly watch in an entire lifetime, when there were go-karts and cubby houses to build?

As a child growing up in Jersey in the 1960s and early 70s, I’d roam the countryside with only my trusted dog for protection. Family outings were undertaken in a car without air bags or seat belts, or clinging for dear life to my father as I perched precariously on the back of his motor cycle.

I also experienced the thrill of riding on the back of lorries and trailers, on my grandparents’ farm or – far more exciting – on the Island’s roads and often at speeds exceeding the legal limit! Let children try that today and health and safety officers or social workers will soon be knocking on parents’ doors.

As I reluctantly grew up, a quote from the Bible was frequently made in my direction, especially from exasperated teachers. It comes from Corinthians: ‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things.’

What twaddle! Which is why Noggin the King of the Nogs will always have a special place in my heart and a Clanger takes pride of place on my desk at work. There is a little bit of Peter Pan in all of us and Oliver Postgate knew that better than anyone.