Rupert Bear Rupert Bear Rupert Bear is a children's comic strip character created by the English artist Mary Tourtel and first appearing in the "Daily Express" newspaper on 8 November 1920. Rupert's initial purpose was to win sales from the rival "Daily Mail" and "Daily Mirror". In 1935, the mantle of Rupert artist and storyteller was taken over by Alfred Bestall, who was previously an illustrator for "Punch" and other glossy magazines. Bestall proved to be successful in the field of children's literature and worked on Rupert stories and artwork into his 90s. More recently, various other artists and writers have continued
The Adventures of Rupert Bear new friends, including a sprite called Willy Wisp. One of the most-remembered elements of the series was the catchy theme song, which was written by Len Beadle and Ron Roker, sung by Jackie Lee, which reached No. 14 in the United Kingdom charts in 1971. The song includes the erroneous lyric "Rupert "the" Bear", even though Rupert has never had the definite article in his name. The narrator of the stories was Judy Bennett. Of the 156 episodes made, for many years only 75 were known to exist in their original colour film format, with a further 16 duplicated on