Bagpuss was devised and created by the brilliant minds of Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin, who also created Noggin The Nog, The Clangers, Ivor the Engine and Pogle's Wood.

Oliver Postgate wrote Bagpuss and provided some of the voices. Peter Firmin said: “I created the visual character of Bagpuss after I had the idea of a cat with visible thoughts, but it was Oliver who breathed life into the creation by supplying his thoughts and voice”.

Bagpuss was first shown in 1974 in Watch With Mother . Although only 13 episodes were made, the programme was so popular that the series was repeated 27 times to successive generations.

Emily, the little girl whose shop Bagpuss lived in, was played by Peter Firmin's seven year old daughter. Emily is now a 37-year-old artist living in Whitstable , Kent.

Emily Firmin said: “The magic of Bagpuss was that children want to be like Emily and live in a world surrounded by puppets rather than adults”.

In the series Emily would find a discarded object that needed repairing and bring it to Bagpuss. She would sing to wake him and his friends – the Mice on the Mouse Organ, Madeleine the ragdoll, Gabriel the toad and Professor Yaffle, the distinguished old woodpecker. Whenever Emily found something that needed repairing Bagpuss would listen as his friends identified, discussed and repaired the object.

Professor Yaffle thought himself the brains of the organisation, Gabriel lived on a tin and played his banjo, Madeleine never moved out of her wicker chair, and the six Mice played the Marvellous Mechanical Mouse Organ.

In 1999 Bagpuss was named the country's favourite BBC children's programme of all time, beating off the challenge of modern TV programmes such as the Teletubbies. A telephone poll for a tribute programme to the BBC's children's output, called Are you Sitting Comfortably , shown on New Years day, saw Bagpuss attract a phenomenal 40,000 votes.

Today Bagpuss is as fresh in the minds of his original fans, and of successive generations who have embraced him, as he was all those years ago. A true British classic which will always hold a special place in the heart of the nation.