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Humphrey B. Bear unemployed - looking for another screen job





Australian children’s show entertainer, Humphrey B. Bear, is unemployed and keen to return to the television screen. If he is not employed again, he will end up in the storeroom (The Advertiser, February 6, 2016).

Humphrey B. Bear is from South Australia, where I grew up. He commenced his career in May 1965 – 50 years ago – on his own program, Here’s Humphrey. He won a Logie for best children’s series (it’s like an Oscar at the Academy Awards), and in 1994 he was given a special Citizen of the Year award. He’s been continuously employed on his show until 2009 – 44 years – making it the second longest running TV show for children in the world. Since then he continued to appear in other productions and in repeats of the program. He continues with his charity work and road safety campaigns.

He is tall, wears a stylish straw boater hat, tartan waistcoat, and flamboyant yellow bow-tie. He is a fun loving, honey-eating, accident-prone bear, who gets in all manner of strife. He is forever four years old, and lives in a tree house in the middle of the magic forest.

He has received criticism over the years, primarily for not wearing pants on television and for being mute. Although he cannot speak, this has never interferred with his professional duties, and his 50 years on screen is proof of his popularity.

Imagination CEO, Shane Yeend, who purchased him in 2012, said that Humphrey B. Bear is for sale, and that he needs to be back on screen and working again. If he is not employed again, he will end up in the storeroom.

The newspaper reports that Mr Bear has declined to comment.

By the way, his middle name is Bear. Humphrey Bear Bear.







Image credits: Roger Wyman (top), Simon Cross (50-years).


MARTINA NICOLLS is the author of:- The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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