Clangers Voices

Quite often children’s programmes have associated folk-lore of some sort or another. In the case of the Clangers it is the legend that they “swore their little heads off”. Rather surprisingly when confronted with a question regarding this allegation Oliver Postgate asserts that it is in fact true.

Indeed problems with Clangers swearing appeared quite early on, when scripts for the series were submitted to the BBC

Another interesting legend is the fire on the Clangers set. Yet again this is true and it can actually be seen at the end of “The Rock Collector” were flames from the set are clearly visible following the landers take off.

While Peter had already started building the sets I had a moment of
anxiety: the BBC suddenly decided that it didn’t like the scripts.

I should explain that the Clangers’ conversation had presented a
technical problem, They spoke a language of very articulate whistling
squeak, which needed to be translated from its natural medium of nuclear
magnetic resonance (there being no air to carry sound) into audible terms.
The nearest I could get to that was to write out the script in full and then
persuade Stephen Sylvester to help me record the dialogue, just as we had
done for the Pogle films, by reading it, or rather playing the inflections of
it, on a selection of Swannee whistles. In this way I was hoping to make a
sort of wild-life film in which, by listening carefully, the viewer would be
able to understand what was being said and work out what was going on,

Rather nervously I asked Ursula Eason of the BBC what they objected
to in the scripts. She replied: "The bad language."

I could only think of one piece of bad language. One of the episodes
begins with Major Clanger trying to open the big sliding doors of the main
cave mouth. It jams and his first line is:

"Oh sod it! The bloody thing’s stuck again!"
"That’s it." said Ursula. "You know quite well we can’t say things like
that on childrens’ programmes."
"But .. " I said, "they don’t say it. They whistle it."
"But surely people will know?"
"If they have nice minds they will hear him say ’Oh dear me. The
naughty thing is jammed again.’"
"Oh, all right then, I suppose so, but please keep the language
moderate."

I moderated the expletives and hoped the scripts would now be
acceptable, However, the BBC still had some reservations, and these were in
fact more sensible. They weren’t happy about our relying solely on the
whistles to tell the story. They said they didn’t think young children would
listen carefully. They would just turn away and ask their mums to tell them
what the Clangers were saying,

So, rather reluctantly, I made a separate voice-over tape, a sort of
intermittent running-commentary on what was going on. It worked quite well
but I have always wondered how the films would go in their original form.

I did try it once, I took an episode of The Clangers to the 1984 E.B.U.
conference in Germany and showed it to the participants without my voice-
over. Afterwards I asked them whether they had been able to understand
what the Clangers were saying.
"But of course." they replied. "They are speaking perfect German."
"But no." said Gerd, "That is not so. They spoke only Swedish,"