Crikey DM! It's the Cosgrove Hall Films Archive!

I headed up to Manchester for a few days last week while my wife and youngest were off to see Raye at Co-op Live. For me, it was also an excuse to revisit some old university haunts – including the wonderful Afflecks Palace, where I blew an large part of my student grant on tie-dye hoodies and flared jeans some 35 years ago.

There was another pull, one that reached back even further into my past: a brand new permanent exhibition of items from the Cosgrove Hall archive.

Cosgrove Hall was a huge part of my childhood. The Manchester-based animation house loomed as large as Walt Disney as far as I was concerned. They had their own mouse – admittedly one with an eye patch and flying car – and a duck who was both a vampire and a vegetarian thanks to a pesky ketchup/blood mix-up.

In 2003, I had the enormous privilege of visiting the now-defunct studio to interview the animators behind Doctor Who: Scream of the Shalka. Even then, I found myself misty-eyed at the sight of props and puppets I remembered from childhood. Now many of those same artefacts have a new, purpose-built home at Sale Public Library.

And the best part? The exhibition is absolutely free!

Further proof that libraries are awesome!

The collection spans every era of Cosgrove Hall’s output, much of it stop-motion brilliance such as Bill and Ben, Cockleshell Bay, Engie Benjy, Rory the Racing Car, Andy Pandy...

...and a certain postman and his black and white cat.

Also, there is a particular favourite of my youth, the utterly charming 1984 Wind in the Willows – although it has to be said that poor old Badger has seen better days...

As nightmare-inducing as the exposed skeletons of the models may be, it's fascinating to see under the skin of the puppets and marvel at the creativity, engineering, and sheer ingenuity of the original artists.

While shows like Engie Benjy and Fifi and the Flowertots brings back happy memories of watching with my daughters when they were small, the main pull for me was the programmes I watched when I was knee-high to a Flowertot myself, including the sublime Count Duckula, the vegetarian vampire duck who helped cement my love of all things gothic from an early age.

And yes, I obviously needed to pose with one of the show's stars!

Duckula, of course, first appeared as a villain in Cosgrove Hall's most iconic creation – Danger Mouse.

I cannot fully explain how much I loved the adventures of the world's greatest secret agent as his hapless sidekick, Penfold. When people ask which character I most wish I’d written, DM is always the answer. I even came painfully close: a fully written and designed book tied to the 2015 reboot was cancelled just before print due to a shift in publishing strategy – a heartbreaking event that happens more often than you'd think. I have a number of PDFs of completed books that never saw the light of day, including the aforementioned Danger Mouse Guide to Being a Sectret Agent!

But that's a story for another day. Back in Sale, one of the best thing of the exhibition was hearing so many visitors joyfully humming the theme tunes. And I don't think it's a hot take to say that Cosgrove Hall had the best theme songs in animation history. From Danger Mouse ("He's the greatest, he's fantastic, wherever there is danger he'll be there!") to the good Count himself ("In the heart of Transylvania, in the vampire hall of fang, yeah, there's not a vampire zanier than Duckula!"), they're permenately lodged in my head.

But none even come close to the absolute banger that is Jamie and the Magic Torch – surely one of the gloriously unhinged cartoons ever committed to celuloid. No two nights are the same, indeed!

I was, quite frankly, inm heaven, though I did worry I might crumble when coming face-to-face with one of my childhood heroes as I did when I visited the studio all those years ago.

This time I mostly kept it together. The hero in question? The titular happiness dragon of Chorlton and the Wheelies, a show that, half a century after it first aired, still has me muttering "Hello, Little Old Lady" at entirely inappropriate moments.

There’s undoubtedly a healthy dose of nostalgia within the exhibition's walls, but there’s also something more important at play. The true heroes weren't the secret agents and vegetarian vampire ducks. They were the creatives who made it all happen – the writers, directors, engineers, artists and animators who built entire worlds from wire, latex, ink and imagination.

The Cosgrove Hall Films Archive offers a timely reminder of what British animation once achieved – and the heights it could reach again. These were the shows that helped spark my imagination. With its treasure trove of behind-the-scenes nuggets – and accompanying digital archive – here's hoping the collection does the same for the next generation of storytellers, as well!

Because, as the exhibition reminds us, it all begins with an idea and a blank piece of paper...

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