Oliver Postgate died yesterday, aged 83, leaving behind an amazing body of work and a hell of a life. There are plenty of old kids TV programme which we nostalge over but which bore us rigid after 10 minutes on dvd. Thanks to the artistry and story-telling and fun that went into them, Clangers and Bagpuss and Ivor will always be a class apart. We look forward to foisting them on future generations for many years to come, and the marvels which he and Peter Firmin achieved in a converted pig-sty should be compulsory viewing for any filmmaker bemoaning their lack of funding.

Less familiar and equally of note (in a more grown-up, messy way) was Postgate’s own story; his crackpot inventions, his conscientious objection during the war, his tumultuous family life, and an abiding sense of inadequacy which he used as a motor for his work and talked about with candour on Desert Island Discs last year. It’s a bugger to track down, but do read his memoirs Seeing Things if you get a chance. Here’s a brief snippet, from a revelation that visited him during a hospital stay in 1978:

“What hit me then was a realisation that this joy in life that drives through all things is the life that drives all things. I felt the huge engine, the driving, rolling river of life and death, of happiness and sadness, a river of which my dark fumbling life was only a tiny part, a leaf on the rapids, yet, in my realisation of it, I was part of the river itself, both a part of it and it a part of me.”

Ordinarily this thread marks the passing of forgotten legends or cult heroes and it seems a little flippant to include a 33 year-old in ‘Obituary Corner’. But this is the kind of thing that won’t get a mention in the papers, and we thought it should be noted here. A four-man operation that grew out of college in Kent, Shynola were a big factor in getting us and many others excited about animation and music videos 7 or 8 years ago and Gideon Baws was central to the group. He died from a virus on 11th October. There’s more at antville and Creative Review and below is one of Shynola’s finest moments, their Lambchop video.

Please be standing for Mr Bruce Conner, artist, founder member of the ‘Rat Bastard Protective Society’ and an inadvertant pioneer of the music video. A man who made speeches entirely composed of dessert names, and handed out badges labelled I Am Bruce Conner. A lot of his film work was assembled from old industrial shorts and B-movie offcuts, and until now we mainly thought of him as the guy that did Mongoloid (pictured, a cut-up classic from 1978 presented as “a documentary film exploring the manner in which a determined young man overcame a basic mental defect and became a useful member of society.”) Since he died on 7th July further digging has revealed plenty more of interest, particularly an even earlier proto pop-video called Breakaway (1966) featuring Toni Basil (of ‘Mickey’ fame, and she who choreographed ‘Once in a Lifetime’). Although much of his work was made up of other people’s footage Conner was extremely protective of his copyright, and we wouldn’t want to make him posthumously cross by embedding his films here. But you can see Breakaway in pixillated form on Google Video, and read about it at Senses of Cinema.

A quick doff of the cap to the amazing Bo Diddley, who died on Monday aged 79. Aquarium Drunkard has a couple of MP3s (we recommend ‘Who Do You Love’, loud) and Dave the Spazz is doing a tribute show tomorrow on the reliably ace WFMU. Or click on the picture above for Bo’s 1973 encounter with a gunslinging heckler.

Although it’s a couple of weeks late, we felt we should mark the passing of one of British horror’s finest purveyors of the heaving bodice. Hazel Court was born in Sutton Coldfield in 1926 (though this Independent obit seems to think it was Birmingham), and after getting a break at the Rep went on to various post-war melodramas before making her name on the Hammer films. Her finest hour was having her throat ripped out by a falcon in the glorious Masque of the Red Death, a film which London folk can see tonight at the Curzon Soho being introduced by Roger Corman. Afer that she concentrated on having kids and being a sculptor and died aged 82 on 15 April 2008.

(While on the subject, I have to confess to a certain morbid love of trawling the Independent’s obituary section. Amazing who you find there. ‘You’ll never guess who’s dead’, as they say in rural Ireland.)