Remembering Bagpuss: the well-loved saggy old cloth cat

The children’s show is marking its 50th birthday, having first aired on February 12, 1974.

Made by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate, it featured Firmin’s daughter Emily.
Bagpuss - the most magical, saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world - lived in a shop that was a home for lost property alongside Professor Yaffle the woodpecker bookend, Gabriel the toad, Madeleine the rag doll and the mice on their magical mouse organ.
Despite only 13 episodes ever being made, the programme remained much-loved down the generations and was voted the all-time favourite children’s programme in 1999.

Bagpuss’s influence was certainly felt in Cumbria, where, in 2007, a real-life version was named Cat of the Week.

It’s hard to imagine anyone abandoning the ginger cat pictured, yet in 2005, that Bagpuss was resident at Barrow Animal Welfare.

When Hawkin’s Bazaar opened on Pow Street, Workington, in 2010, Molly-Anne Dryden, four, from Distington was among the first customers.
She wasted no time in making friends with the stripy cat on the shelf.

It’s not clear if Bagpuss helped, but in 2006, golfer Simon Young from Egremont won the British Mid-Amateur Championship.
He is pictured with the furry toy alongside fellow mascot Captain America.

Bagpuss has even been enlisted as a storytime assistant.
Our picture shows the cat with Kate Davidson from Carlisle Library Service at a session for youngsters at Burger King in Carlisle in 2003.

It’s not just children whom Bagpuss has inspired.
Musicians Sandra Kerr, James Fagan, John Faulkner and Nancy Kerr – collectively known as Bagpuss – are pictured at Whitehaven Civic Hall in 2002.

In a feature on Christmas toys in 2001, Bradie Bell named the cat as a favourite.