Quote of the day

"The character design, the writing, the narration, the sound effects, the music: each individual element of every Smallfilms creation was absolutely pitch-perfect. That's not just rare, it's almost unprecedented. That it all appeared effortless is a testament to their genius: it's a level of craft that's impossible to achieve by anyone aiming for it on a conscious level. It's either in you or it isn't. It was in Oliver Postgate, and that's why he was - for my money, and without the slightest whiff of hyperbole - the greatest children's storyteller of the last 100 years. Rest in peace, sir. You earned it."

In a rare-as-hen's-teeth moment of being sincerely positive, with nary a sign of witty savagery or withering sarcasm, Charlie Brooker writes on the late Oliver Postgate in his Guardian column on Saturday. But, as is usually the case, he speaketh the truth.

(Incidentally, he has a point about Postgate being a great example of a good old-fashioned British eccentric, which I meant to make a few days ago - it's fitting that for a nation supposedly full of men busying themselves away in their sheds (at least one of our authors uses his shed as his office...), some of our finest children's programmes were put together in a cowshed...)

I only came across the Guardian article having caught last night's 'Screenwipe', which had eerily already been earmarked to be devoted to children's TV and ended with Brooker delivering a tribute that was almost word-for-word identical. I shouldn't have to encourage you to watch, but you really should, you know.