Guy Lochhead, 07/09/10
English artist and animator, and co-founder of Smallfilms, with Oliver Postgate, which produced many popular television programmes including ‘Bagpuss’, ‘The Clangers’ and ‘Ivor The Engine’. Firmin was responsible for the artistic design of the programmes. He was hired as someone who “would do a lot of drawing for very little money”. He also co-created Basil Brush, using a real foxtail. Firmin helped make some brilliant programmes, and should not be overlooked by any means, but I am more interested in Postgate’s life, to be honest. It’s not really an either/or situation, but if Postgate didn’t exist, I think I would not have written about Firmin.