Back in the Sixties, puppeteer Gordon Murray made a set of models out of ping-pong balls and plastic foam.

He never dreamed that more than 30 years on the characters he created from odds and ends would have become enduring TV heroes.

Camberwick Green, the children's programme Gordon created, and its spin-offs, Trumpton and Chig-ley, have become cult viewing.

Generations of children have grown up with the gentle tales of life in the fictional towns and villages of Trumptonshire, where Gordon's ping-pong ball characters lived.

Windy Miller, Mrs Honeyman, PC McGarry and the rest of the model citizens became TV favourites and people of all ages can still recite the fire station roll call: "Pugh, Pugh, Barney McGrew, Cuthbert, Dibble and Grubb".

Now, 33 years after Camberwick Green was first screened by the BBC, the show is enjoying a resurgence in popularity and gaining a fresh legion of fans after being bought by Channel Four.

Gordon is delighted - and amazed - by the continuing popularity of the shows.

Camberwick Green, Trumpton and Chigley were broadcast weekly from 1966 to 1986.

Only 39 programmes were made - 13 in each series - so they were constantly repeated.

After 20 years the programme was dropped. Gordon said: "It went out of fashion. There were all sorts of American animated cartoons on ITV and it couldn't compete.

"The whole thing was dead until three years ago when my eldest daughter, who is connected with the film business, said, 'The time has come and we should go to Channel 4'. We did, and they were delighted to take it."

Now there are Camberwick Green models, videos, cards and stationery, plus a Trumptonshire web site, and Gordon has found himself in demand again.

Woodentops

Gordon, 78, and his wife, Enid, live quietly in genteel Bexhill - the sort of town his TV characters would have felt at home in. He said: "Nothing much happens here but that's the way I like it."

A former actor, Gordon set up his own puppet company when he was de-mobbed after the war.

He had always loved making puppets and as a child staged little shows at home. He became a puppeteer at the BBC in the early days of children's television, working on The Woodentops - "I was Spottie the Dog" - and later producing TV puppet shows.

In 1965 he left the BBC to become an independent TV producer - a move then virtually unheard of - and survived a lean period before the BBC commissioned him to make a children's series for the Watch With Mother slot. Camberwick Green was the result and the popularity of the programme led to commissions for the spin-offs.

He said: "There were 60 named characters in total and I made them all myself at home."

Each model had to be moved a fraction for every frame and it took 25 frames to make one second of film. Each 15-minute programme took a month to make.

But today the models, which would be sought-after collector's items, are long gone.

They ended up on a bonfire in Gordon's back garden after the show went out of fashion.

Today Gordon spends his time hand-making books of poetry. He is thrilled that so many people look back fondly at Camberwick Green, with its innocent adventures, as part of their childhood.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.