Puppeteer and creator of Trumpton

Born: 1921;

Died: June 30, 2016

GORDON Murray, who has died at the age of 95, was a puppeteer who created the children’s series set in the towns of Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley. Featuring characters such as Windy Miller and the firemen Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grub and with a gentle narration by Brian Cant, the series became one of the most enduring and popular of the 1960s and 70s.

The series was made using the time-consuming stop-motion technique in which small puppets are manipulated in tiny increments and filmed to create the illusion of movement, but it was the quirky combination of animation, music and the warm, comforting atmosphere of the fictional towns that made it a hit. The aim, said Murray, was to protect children for as long as possible from the dreadful world they lived in.

There were three series in all, starting with Camberwick Green in 1966, which always began with a shot of a musical box which rotated to the sound of Brian Cant’s narration: “Here is a box, a musical box, wound up and ready to play. But this box can hide a secret inside. Can you guess what is in it today?”

Camberwick Green was a town in the county of Trumptonshire and over the 13, fifteen-minute episodes, children became familiar with characters including Windy Miller, who lived in a windmill and seemed to always – just – avoid being hit by the blades. It was the first children’s programme to be aired in colour on the BBC.

A year later, there was a sequel, Trumpton, which started with a shot of Trumpton Town Hall Clock and Cant reading out a short rhyme: "Here is the clock, the Trumpton clock. Telling the time, steadily, sensibly; never too quickly, never too slowly. Telling the time for Trumpton".

Trumpton also featured probably Murray’s most famous characters – the firemen who arrive for work to a roll call read out by Cant: "Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble, Grub." Murray said the names of the characters came from the rhythm they were trying to create. “That was the big hit of choreography that I did,” he said, “influenced by my wife, who was a ballet dancer. Pugh and Pugh are twins you must understand – not Hugh, Pugh.”

In 1969, came the final series in the trilogy, Chigley, which featured Lord Belborough of Winkstead Hall who, with his butler Brackett, liked nothing better than driving his train through Trumptonshire.

The programmes were an immediate success, and are still a cult hit today, but their creation was something of a gamble for Murray. Born in London, he had worked as a journalist after leaving school before serving in the London Scottish Regiment during the Second World War and taking part in the Normandy landings.

He then worked for a time as an actor in rep but has always been fascinated by marionettes and by the 1950s had established his own touring puppet company. “I have been interested in puppets ever since I was a child,” he said. “My enthusiasm was greatly stimulated, I remember, by a visit to the Victoria Palace when I was about eight to see Delvain’s Marionettes on the variety bill.”

It was during one of the performances of his own company, Murray's Marionettes, that he was spotted by a BBC producer called Freda Lingstrom who asked him to produce puppets shows for the corporation.

One of his first jobs was operating Spotty the dog in the Woodentops; he also worked as a puppeteer on the series Bengo which ran from 1953 until 1959 and featured the adventures of a boxer pup. But his first major project was 33 episodes of A Rubovia Legend, which featured puppets similar in style to the Trumpton characters and told the story of King Rufus and his courtiers. It ran from 1958 to 1963.

The following year, Murray left the BBC to establish his own production company which produced the Trumpton series, having turned down the chance to become the head of the BBC’s children’s department. He scripted all the episodes and created the entire look and sound of the series. He chose Brian Cant, he said, because, as a young father, he had the right sort of tone.

Murray also wanted his fictional towns to be happy places. “There’s no crime in Trumptonshire,” he said. “It’s a happy world, and a lot of people say ‘Well you shouldn’t encourage children to think that the world’s like that’ but I believe that you must protect children while they are children for as long as possible, from this dreadful world we’re living in.”

After the end of Trumpton, Murray went on to create six remakes of Rubovia for the BBC in 1976 and created shorts featuring the characters Skip and Fluffy for the BBC’s Saturday morning show Multi-Coloured Swap Shop. In 1977, he also created the series The Gublins, which featured chimp-like creatures involved in a series of tall tales.

By 1979, Murray had left the puppet business and in the 1980s produced miniature books featuring his watercolours. Sadly, he also burned all the Trumpton puppets on a bonfire in his back garden.

In 2016, William Mollett, the son-in-law of Gordon Murray, publically objected to the use of the Trumpton characters in Radiohead’s video for their single Burn the Witch. Mr Mollett said: “Radiohead should have sought our consent as we consider this a tarnishing of the brand. It is not something we would have authorised.”

Gordon Murray is survived by his daughters Emma and Rose and four grandchildren and was pre-deceased by his wife, the ballet dancer Enid Martin.