Anyone else here remember Bagpuss?

Sweet innocent sepia-toned memories of childhood, except when you look under the surface it’s actually quite a lot more sinister than we gave it credit for.

I mean come on, in the first 2 minutes, Bagpuss is “summoned” by Emily using the words of an ancient spell, animating the saggy old cloth cat to a living sentient being, much in the same way that happened in, oh, I don’t know, a satanic ritual of dedication to the dark lords of the underworld. What you can’t see below camera shot is the pentacle of blood and goat skulls surrounded by sputtering candles made from the fat of slaughtered innocents.

In fact there’s more than a passing evil influence running through the entire program. “When Bagpuss goes to sleep, all of his friends go to sleep”. Well, yes, that’s also what happened with the Jonestown Massacre. ‘The mice became ornaments on the mouse organ’. They certainly went stiff in the end, for sure.

And that’s another thing. Why is is a ‘mouse’ organ? One can only guess that it’s genetically the most similar to a human organ and was used to perform horrific DNA mutation experiments, way before the CRISPr DNA sequencer was invented for more beneficial outcomes.

Talking about foreshadowing the future, the episode where the mice create ‘chocolate biscuits’ out of thin air using a ‘factory’ that — oops, spoiler alert — recycles the produced biscuits out the back in a lossless transaction to create new from old- surely the business model from which Bitcoin was created, and the real winners being the people selling you the ‘factories’ for an intangible product that only exists in the ether.

And the mice? Well, let’s face it, there’s only one reason their leader is called ‘Charlie’ if you look carefully you can see him disappear behind the mouse organ to deal narcotics to the rest of the hyperactive rodents in his gang. Where does he get the money from for his coke habit? Money Laundering from the whole Biscuit Factory scam.

*We will wash it, we will scrub it, fake the whole amount-mount-mount,

We will move through five tax havens, using false account-count-counts”

Of course in a cynical world we are introduced to other characters, such as Gabriel the frog, although if the first words out of the mouth of someone who you had just been introduced to were ‘Oyyy YOP. Op. Oyyy UPP’, you’d be concerned he was about to bring up last night’s 10 pints and a half digested kebab all over you. Then stumble off into the dark, rebounding off streetlamps and bouncers, green around the gills somewhat.

And Madeline would sit up to greet you, but having had her drink spiked last night, she’s as limp as a rag doll. When she does sit up, she’s not about to smile. More like ask ‘I only had a couple and then it I can’t remember anything after 7 last night’.

The only bright spark would be the academic, a distinguished old wooden woodpecker called Professor Richard Dawkins. “Nyeh Nyeh Neh!” he’d exclaim when confronted with an object or concept of uncertain origin. “If something is true, no amount of wishful thinking will change it”. Prodding the new unidentified item brought forth for psychosocial analysis, he adds “A delusion is something that people believe in despite a total lack of evidence.”.

This all goes well until Professor Richard Dawkins realises the paradox of being a Woodpecker made of wood and succumbs to natural instinct and accidentally commits suicide by drilling a hole through his abdomen with his own beak.

Thus through such dark social realities were the youngsters of the 70s prepared for the world they must inherit in 2022.