Happy 50th, Muppets! As a child, answering their fan mail taught me so much

Let’s say I’m 11-years-old. It’s 1978. The scene is a small two-bedroom apartment on Manhattan’s Upper West Side; high enough up so there’s a view not only of the broad Hudson River but also all the way south to the bottom of the island, the Twin Towers down in the bright haze.

I come home from school, I have a snack, I do my homework. My dad, Arthur, a graphic designer, is at a drawing table, working with paper and X-Acto knives; I can hear my mother, Ellen, in their bedroom, typing on an IBM Selectric.

On the kitchen table there’s a pile of photographs, 8x10 glossies: Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, Gonzo. Next to them there’s a Sharpie. I sit down and I begin to sign. The signature for each beloved character was developed by his – or, ahem, her – creator: Jim Henson for Kermit, Frank Oz for Piggy, Dave Goelz for Gonzo. I’d learned each signature and was able to mimic them perfectly. Ten photographs, 20, 50, 100. I signed and signed. (I once told this story and someone thought to wonder whether this work of mine was, somehow, fraudulent. Hmm. I say to you: Muppets. Hands. You figure it out.) Around the kitchen table there were piles of letters, sorted neatly into stacks. “Miss Piggy’s autograph”. “Wants to be a puppeteer”. “Wants to watch The Muppet Show being filmed.”

When I was a kid, my parents’ job was answering all the fan mail for the Muppets. I got to help them. I knew how lucky I was, even then.

The Muppet Show celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. To mark the occasion, Disney – which acquired the Muppets and their whole back catalogue in 2004 – has made a new Muppet Show, executive produced by Seth Rogen (surely the busiest man in show business?), rebooting the old formula in pretty faithful style. Sabrina Carpenter – her blonde locks matching “her idol” Miss Piggy’s – is the first guest star. Maya Rudolph and Rogen also appear. I’d say it’s a measure of how much the original was and is loved that the new show is reassuringly (even eerily) familiar: there’s the backstage business with Kermit and Scooter; Piggy the diva; and Statler and Waldorf grousing in their box. The theme tune toots along just as it did on every episode of its original five seasons, from 1976 to 1981.

There have been revivals before, of course; James Bobin’s 2011 film The Muppets starring Jason Segel (who co-wrote the script) and Amy Adams got into the swing of things pretty well. Still, the question is: can you – or at least, can I – go home again?

I’m guessing you’d like a little backstory. Your parents’ job was answering all the fan mail for the Muppets? How the heck did that happen? These were the days, my friends, of small creative industries, when a young fellow called Jim Henson from Greenville, Mississippi, fell in love with a new medium – television – and determined to make it work for his artistry.

Yes, television came first: puppets followed. Kermit began as a coat discarded by Henson’s mother and a ping-pong ball cut in half. He made his first appearance on a show called Sam and Friends in 1955: the Muppets had started to make their way into the world. Soon there was Sesame Street, produced by the Children’s Television Workshop, and a crew of dedicated performers able to bring felt and fur thrillingly to life.

One of my parents’ oldest friends was an entertainment lawyer who’d taken on Henson and his team. The Muppet Show, it’s worth noting, struggled to get on air: no American network believed that a puppet show for grown-ups, intended for prime-time in the evening, had any chance of success. It took an Englishman to take a punt – Lew Grade, later Lord Grade – and thanks to his vision The Muppet Show was always filmed in London.

My mom had done some work in PR before I was born. At some point in the mid-1970s, a trickle of fan mail had begun arriving for the Muppets. Remember: no email. No fax. No social media. No memes. If you liked something, you picked up pen and paper, you got an envelope and stamp, worked out where to send your letter and off it went, a physical object travelling from one human hand to another. So, would my mother like to help out by answering these few missives? Sure. Why not.

Then the trickle became a flood. Wikipedia tells me, I think pretty reliably, that by January 1977, more than 100 countries had either acquired the series or were making offers; by 1978, its third season, it had a weekly worldwide audience of 235 million. If even a tiny, tiny fraction of those people wrote in, you can imagine how many letters ended up in our apartment.

My mom usually fetched them herself, in big mail bags, from the beautiful townhouse on East 69th that was the Henson office at the time. The Creature Shop, where the Muppets were built, was in the basement, and boy was it a treat to visit. (There was another Creature Shop in London, of course.)

When we got the letters home, my first job, before signing, was sorting. My folks worked together to develop a host of form letters that could be sent out in reply to queries: still, I reckon she answered between 10 and 20 letters a month individually, tapping away on her Selectric.

And she took on another role, too. Every year Henson threw a grand party for his employees, not least so his Muppet-makers could show off their skills. These “masked balls” took place at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel and the whole shebang was put together by Ellen F Wagner. One year, she found a remarkable performer for the party: an astonishingly skilled juggler who could make crystal balls move as if by magic. His name was Michael Moschen, and if you’re one of the many who love Labyrinth, give a little cheer of thanks to my dear late mother.

I’m a very fortunate person in many ways. I went to a school I loved. I was always a reader. But as I get older, I realise more and more that my passionate belief in the power of art to connect us in a way nothing else can, comes from a single source: the Muppets. Henson, who died far too young at 53, was one of the great geniuses of his age, or of any age. I saw up close not just how art was made, but how people from every walk of life, all over the world, adored it and felt it belonged to them. My parents listened to those people. They answered them. Everyone was heard and seen. This is rare indeed.

And all of this in the context of the Muppets, beloved for the best reasons: because they are hilarious and real; because they yearn to be their best selves, just like us; and because they never quite manage it, just like us.

You can’t go home again – that’s no secret. I find it hard to watch the new show. I don’t want to be a curmudgeon, but seeing anyone other than their original creators animate those characters seems plain wrong to me. You wouldn’t want to watch someone pretending to be Humphrey Bogart, would you?

I had a special and extraordinary experience as a kid. But I know, from the way a room lights up when I say, “My parents answered all the fan mail for the Muppets,” that I am not alone.

Not so long ago, my son sent me a quote that I keep tucked in my phone: “Be a Kermit the Frog. Have a creative vision and no ego. Recognise the unique talents of those around you. Attract weirdos. Manage chaos. Show kindness. Be sincere.”

Rules to live by, don’t you think? Play the music. Light the lights.

Rita Moreno (season one)
The star of West Side Story duets with Animal in an unforgettable rendition of Fever.

Rudolf Nureyev (season two)
The appearance of the most famous dancer in the world redefined the show. Swine Lake: unmatched.

Alice Cooper (season three)
In which the rock star was cast as an agent of the Devil, prompting a flood of furious letters from evangelical Christians across the US, as I can testify.

Liza Minnelli (season four)
A murder-mystery plot holds the show together, but Minelli’s Copacabana is a showstopper.

Harry Belafonte (season three)
A work of art, full stop. Belafonte collaborated closely with Henson to build the show: from Day-O to Turn the World Around, it’s perfect.

Photographs by Disney/Mitch Haaseth, Brownie Harris/Corbis via Getty Images, Keystone Press/Alamy, Everett Collection Inc/Alamy