Cosgrove Hall at the Lowry

The last major exhibition about Cosgrove Hall that I know of was "World of Animation", held in Liverpool in about 1992. I missed that one, so I wasn't about to let the Lowry event pass me by! So, as we hopped on a tram from the centre of Manchester, our epic journey to Salford began. First of all, let me tell you that the Salford Quays are SCARY. Despite being a very recent development, they have an alarming Resident Evil-esque air about them, possibly created by the total lack of any human life in the area. I swear we walked for about ten minutes in this huge wide-open space without seeing a single living thing! Anyway, we were eventually alerted to the presence of the Lowry by a giant Dangermouse sticker, an essential addition to any pane of glass in my humble opinion. The Lowry itself is a jolly nice building – see?

The entrance to the exhibition is adorned with an enormous banner with every single Cosgrove Hall character ever on it, which was sadly much too large for me to shove under my t-shirt and walk out with (and don't think I wasn't tempted). Before you hand over your £3.75 to get in, you will develop an uncontrollable urge to prod, stroke or molest a very large model of Igor carrying a tray of leaflets. On the right is my other half doing just that (he's the one with the glasses). Oh, and yes, I did "borrow" most of my banner graphics from those very same leaflets, so don't bother writing in to point that out.

The first thing we saw was a big screen showing clips of CH stuff, including scenes from Albie, their very latest show. I'm afraid I can't tell you much about it, other than it featured amusing computer-generated wildebeest. The video filmography showing in the same room was sadly incomplete, missing important shows like Alias the Jester (which, incidentally, did not get a single mention in the whole exhibition – a major oversight, surely?).

There's a very nice interactive area for the kiddies, where you get to make models, do drawings and even try some computer animation. Naturally, being incredibly childish, we had to have a go. The idea of this thing was for you to create a computer facsimile of yourself, and then animate it. Sadly, I failed at this; however, I would have succeeded admirably had I been a spastic, effete disco-dancer from the 1980s.

Most of the exhibition consists of cels, models and general pre-production art, with accompanying information. Now, anyone that knows me will tell you I LOVE this stuff (you can go to the animation art bit to see my own collection), so I just roamed around and drooled for a long time. Like many animation studios, Cosgrove Hall unfortunately destroyed most of their cels, but there were still enough there to send me into paroxysms of joy. Plus, all the models from their 3-D series were on display – even the old ones!

After having our picture taken in some giant flowerpots, we sat and watched a video about the making of Bill and Ben for a while. A small child tried to join us at one point, but strangely he seemed much less interested in what John Thompson had to say than we were. We also had a bit of a play with BRIAN, a giant metal head. When I had reached animation art saturation point about half an hour later, we decided it was time to go. Of course, I wasn't about to leave without having my picture taken with Dangermouse! I was disappointed to discover that there were no souvenirs relating to the exhibition in the gift shop, not even postcards or a brochure. I'd have paid good money for a replica of that banner with all the characters on it, too. Passing up the opportunity to have a Duckula or Dangermouse Happy-style meal in the cafe, we made our way back to the tram stop through Raccoon Ci–I mean, the Salford Quays.

Overall impressions? I enjoyed it lots, but then again, it only cost me about a fiver and an hour and a half on the train to get to Manchester. If you live very far away, you might feel there's not enough in the exhibition to justify the time and money it'll take you to get there. I was also disappointed to find that many productions were glossed over or even ignored completely (although you'd have to be quite familiar with the studio's work to realise this). But on the whole, I give it two paws up.

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