Don't forget the Pogles

Okay, so I'm a bit late on this - I was in London yesterday for a day-long newspaper awards-judging session - but most of the well-deserved Oliver Postgate tributes this week have focused on his classic shows Bagpuss, Ivor the Engine, Noggin the Nog and The Clangers.

And yes, they were all brilliant - especially The Clangers which coincided with the Moon landings and briefly became terriby topical and zeitgeisty around about 1968/69. Despite this I was rarely allowed to watch it as my dad found the "swanee whistle" sound made by the knitted creatures intolerable and invariably switched channels if he came into the room while it was on.

But my own personal favourite Postgate show has received relatively little mention in the national press over the past couple of days. This was Pogles' Wood, the gentle tale of woodland folk that was screened between 1966 and 1968 as part of the Watch With Mother series.

Children today would probably find it too gentle, too uneventful when set against the delights of Me Too, Balamory and so on. To my four-year-old eyes, though, it was simply magical.

But those looking for an assessment of the political significance of Oliver Postgate should look no further than the increasingly must-read blog of Independent on Sunday political editor Jane Merrick.

With more and more MSM writers launching themselves on the blogospehere, Jane has carved out a notable niche for herself of late. Her blog may not necessarily always be the most authoritative to emerge from a national newspaper, but it is, by some considerable distance, the funniest.