Browsing the web looking for something, I no longer remember what, I was swpet up into a moment of sheer nostalgia.  I don't have an awful lot of strong memories from my childhood, I'm always amazed by people who seem to recollect perfectly everything from the age of 3, but one thing I do remember is Pippin weekly.  This was probably my first comic (sorry, picture weekly.  The word "comic" seems to have been kept mainly to stand up comedians when dealing with the very young pre-school market).  I can remember the excitement of this coming through the letterbox every Monday morning and loving it almost purely for the Pogles.  If you never saw the Pogles it is very hard to describe.  The closest thing to it I've seen today is Ben and Holly's little Kingdom but even that comes nowhere close.  If you imagine, if you can, stop motion, nordic or germanic fairy tales relocated to Somerset and directed by Terry Gilliam you'd probably come close.


The comic lacked the dark and slightly gloomy edge of the TV series but at the age of 5 I didn't really care.  This was probably my first solo step on a lifelong love affair with the written word so it will always have a place in my heart.

And then I remembered this.