Alison Prince, scriptwriter

I'd written a children's series called Joe, so I was already kicking around the BBC. At some point, Monica Sims, head of children's broadcasting, said: "Oh, you wouldn't like to write some stories for a puppet series, would you?" She was a very offhand woman; she'd been a naval officer.

I didn't have a TV, but I had three kids to feed, so I said yes. I always said yes to anything. So I was dispatched to a bitterly cold converted church in the East End of London, where Trumpton's creator Gordon Murray was filming a test sequence using stop-motion animation. It dawned on me how quaint the remit was. You can't depict flames using stop-motion, nor can you do smoke and water. So I realised I would have to write 13 stories about a fire brigade that never went anywhere near a fire.

Another problem was that the puppets all looked exactly the same. My first task was to make them different. I looked at the sequence over and over again and thought: "Well, there's one who looks a bit lanky. I'll call him Dibble." Grub was the silly one who came tumbling in late, having obviously been interrupted halfway through a ham sandwich. Two were absolutely identical, so I felt they must be twins: Pugh and Pugh. Another one, who had a certain largeness of gesture, I imagined to be Irish. He became Barney McGrew.

At that time, I was living in a rented flat. We didn't have a washing machine, so I used to write Trumpton in the launderette while watching the washing go round. I wrote terribly fast in those days. Nowadays, on a computer, I fiddle about endlessly. But in those days, I only had a manual typewriter and I used to just bang it out.

It's all Trumpton's part of what is now considered the golden age of children's TV, but at the time we didn't think of it like that. The budgets were tiny and we did it out of a spirit of fun. I just saw Trumpton as a little job. And it was a little job: I got paid £15 per episode. It was a complete surprise that it became so popular.

‘Let’s call the lanky one Dibble’ … Trumpton, which first aired in the 1960s Photograph: Ronald Grant Archive

Brian Cant, narrator

We used to record Trumpton in the bedroom of the show's composer, Freddie Phillips. I would drive from my house in Kent to his house in Surrey, and we would record three episodes in a day. It was as much of a studio as we needed. The process was simple. I would read a script and ask Alison a bit about each character. Then we would rehearse for an hour, and spend half an hour recording it, with me doing everyone's voice. The famous description of the clock at the beginning of every episode – "Here is the clock, the Trumpton clock, telling the time steadily, sensibly ..." – was only ever recorded once.

Trumpton was the second of three series we did about Trumptonshire. The first was Camberwick Green. When we started that, I had no idea what the show would even look like. I knew the characters were kind of ploddy, but I never saw a set until I eventually watched it on the box. When I did, I was thrilled. My favourite character was Windy Miller. He used to like a bit of cider, and plod his way through the spinning arms of the windmill.

It's very nice that it's been remastered – but where's my repeat fee? I've heard nothing. But Trumpton was such a joy. It was always a pleasure to turn up at Freddie's house. They were such charming scripts. Everyone was nice to everyone else, the songs were such fun, and people still recognise my voice. About three years ago, some friends and I did a Trumpton-themed show at the Edinburgh festival. There weren't any children: it was packed with 40-year-olds who had watched the show when they were younger.

• This article was amended on 22 February 2012 to correct a quote from Alison Prince. The original said "Let's call the lanky one Cuthbert". This has been corrected.