The folk singer, songwriter and broadcaster Sandra Kerr, who has died aged 84 of leukaemia, was strongly influenced in her early years by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. In the 1960s she sang and recorded albums with her husband John Faulkner, and together they created the music for the popular 1974 children’s television series Bagpuss.
The couple had already composed music for Sam on Boffs’ Island, a schools television series written by Michael Rosen, starring Tony Robinson and Miriam Margolyes, that was broadcast in 1972. Oliver Postgate and Peter Firmin had provided stop-motion animated sequences for that series, and when they were devising Bagpuss, they turned to Sandra and John.
