General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

Bonkers

On the Clangers' secret language
"Their scripts had to be written out in English, for Steven Sylvester and I to use Swanny whistles; we just sort of blew the whistles in Clanger language for the text that was there, so it didn't matter much what was written. But when the BBC got the script, [they] rang me up and said 'at the beginning of episode three, where the doors get stuck, Major Clanger says "Sod it, the bloody thing's stuck again". Well, darling, you can't say that on children's television, you know, I mean you just can't.' I said 'It's not going to be said, it's going to be whistled', but [they] just said 'But people will know!' … Years later, when the merchandising took off, the Golden Bear company wanted a Clanger and a Clanger phrase for it to make when you squeezed it, they got 'Sod it, the bloody thing's stuck again'!"

From here.