Feathers McGraw In Prison

Feathers McGraw

In case anybody is deceived, Feathers McGraw is a penguin. He stuck a rubber glove on his head and pretended to be a chicken. It is true that he managed to throw investigators off the scent, but in the end he was captured.

Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends

If you are in London, then you can visit the Young V&A to see the behind the scenes stuff the goes into Aardman’s Wallace & Gromit films and other films the Aardman team make.

It’s on until November, so there’s time to see it. The Young V&A is in the East End, and a five minute walk from Bethnal Green station on the Central Line.

Morph

Morph could do anything – roll himself into a ball, change himself into a teapot, and and back into Morph.

Until Tamara and I went to the exhibition – and it was Tamara who persuaded me to go – I thought that Tony Hart made Morph. After all, Tony Hart was an artist and it was he who introduced the Morph stop-motion cartoons on his Take Hart programme on TV.

But no, at the exhibition I found out that it was Peter Lord and David Sproxton who made Morph, and later they were joined by Nick Park, who dreamed up and drew Wallace and Gromit.

Creature Comforts

The animated series that broke boundaries was Creature Comforts. It was maybe a bit cruel, but it was funny. Nick Park gathered unscripted audio interviews with members of the public and then ‘translated’ the conversations to make it look like animals talking about everyday life.

Creature Comforts first appeared on TV in October 2003, but it appeared originally as an award-winning animated short film by Nick Park and Aardman Animations in 1989, a month before Wallace and Gromit appeared.

What made it satire were the very expressive characters of the animals. Just look at the character of the cat, with its hind leg parked casually on another leg while it expounds some great truth.

Update 28 August

I got an email from the V&A just now saying “Please note that due to industrial action, Young V&A, V&A East Museum and V&A East Storehouse will be closed on 4-5 September 2026. The exhibitions The Music is Black: A British Story, Inside Aardman: Wallace & Gromit and Friends and the David Bowie Centre will be closed”.