A clanger: Rhodri Marsden's Interesting Objects

Number 36

µ Forty-five years ago this weekend, a Clanger scuttled on to our TV screens for the first time. Ancestors of these curious, whistling creatures first appeared in book form, alongside kids' favourite Noggin the Nog, in Noggin and the Moon Mouse. When the BBC asked Noggin's creators, Smallfilms, to produce a new TV series, co-founder Oliver Postgate figured that setting it in space was a good idea. And so The Clangers was born.

µ Without wishing to ruin the magic, each Clanger had a wooden skeleton, joined with Meccano, stuffed with chopped foam and dressed in a woollen skin knitted by Joan Firmin, wife of Smallfilms other co-founder, Peter Firmin. The "undistinguished moon" was made of polystyrene and plaster of Paris, with Clangers fixed to its surface by pins pushed through holes in their wooden feet. Their fingers were made of pipe cleaners, and flying objects hung precariously from pieces of string. (It was 1969, after all.)

µ Their voices were recorded using Swanee whistles that played the speech patterns of a script written out in English. The BBC disapproved of some of the more 'adult' language used in the script ("Oh sod it! The bloody thing's stuck again," says Major Clanger in one episode) but were pacified by Postgate's assurance that listeners would never know. Nor were the BBC certain that their whistles alone could convey the story; Postgate reluctantly added his observational commentary that lent the series so much charm.

µ Three days after the Clangers' first broadcast, man landed on the moon for the second time. A Nasa scientist is reputed to have described The Clangers as "an attempt to bring a note of realism to the fantasy of the space race". The woollen creatures are due to return to our screens next year, in a new Smallfilms series narrated by Michael Palin