I don't know if Rupert Bear is an internationally known cartoon character but he has appeared in the Daily Express in the UK since the 1920s and "the Rupert Annual" has been published every Christmas since 1936. I have been a devotee for as long as I can remember and my "Bendy Rupert" has been my constant companion and frequent confidante since I was nine years old, indeed he still lives on top of my wardrobe from where he can watch over me when I am asleep.

Rupert accompanied me virtually everywhere throughout my childhood and for quite a long time into my adolescence and I can't remember anyone making fun of me for having a teddy bear well beyond the age when it would be considered usual (if anybody had they would be quite likely to wake up with a crowd round them). Rupert would be carried around with his head and arms sticking out of the top of my sweater or out of a pocket of my backpack, when I arrived in class or at a friends house Rupert would be posed reading a book on top of a cupboard or holding a spoon at lunchtime sometimes he would be posed doing naughty things and if any of the teachers noticed him I would get spanked and told to put him away.

Those teachers who wouldn't allow me to bring Rupert into class with me (and he was banned from the entire school for about six months) I would annoy by talking in rhyming couplets in the same style as the Rupert stories were written, this also got me spanked on a couple of occasions, as did wearing my Rupert Bear clothes (yellow and red checked trousers with a matching scarf and a red sweater) after Rupert had been excluded from school.

Although Rupert was a very well behaved bear, I was often spanked when he was being naughty, but I suppose it is only fair because my mom would often punish Rupert when I was being naughty by putting him in solitary confinement in a kitchen cupboard.

This anecdote neatly illustrates the fact that Sister Lotta is never around when she is actually needed.

Please don't tempt the Devil to post a comment. Whats wrong with dear old Rupert being put in a cupboard.
Who remembers a very naughty Rupert Bear in the 60s underground mag OZ ?

The controversy arose when Rupert's head was transposed onto the body of a character from an allegedly obscene cartoon strip.

It sparked the longest obscenity trial in British legal history and in 1971 the magazine's publishers faced a maximum sentence of life imprisonment under an archaic law - 'conspiracy to corrupt public morals'. If they'd been charged simply with 'obscenity', the maximum penalty would have been £100 fine or 6 months.

John (Rumpole) Mortimer was the defence barrister.

Actually it was just a cartoon strip of Rupert complete with huge purple apendage. There was a poster size picture of the little grinning chap.
Lotta was not old enough at the time to have seen it, moi was. It went round the office like wildfire. It was also sought on the " black market " as a colectors item.

MIMI

It still is a collector's item, too!

£500-1000 for a mint copy of Oz with the offending Rupert!


Steve

Good to see you back.
I don't have the Rupert one but I do have the poster of "Honeybunch Kaminsky jail bait of the month"

MIMI

There's quite a few Oz on e-bay au moment, but nothing as rare as Honey, I think!


There's a nice Jimi Hendrix signed poster edition-£101 and still going, plus a Pete Brown & Pibloko effort I'm tempted by, as Pete Brown wrote great lyrics for Cream & came up with two of the most enduring and unfathomable titles of all tip for his albums.

"Meal you can shake hands with in the Dark" was pretty cool, but the winner has to be:-

"Things may come,and things may go, but the art-school dance goes on forever"


Wonder why the album sold so poorly?


Steve


PS-Holiday was great!