Mary Tourtel was created in 1920, at a time when the "Express" was in competition with "The Daily Mail" and its then popular comic strip "Teddy Tail", as well as the strip "Pip, Squeak and Wilfred" in "The Daily Mirror". The then news editor of the "Express", Herbert Tourtel, was approached with the task of producing a new comic strip to rival those of the "Mail" and "Mirror" and immediately thought of his wife Mary, already an established author and artist. Rupert Bear was the result and was first published as a nameless character in a strip titled "Little Lost Bear" on
Daily Express D Wetherspoon Tim Martin who both gave interviews for 8 January's special edition of the paper. The first week of the campaign saw a response of around 370,000 signatures being received (just over 50% of daily readership or around 0.6% of the UK population). Daily Express The Daily Express is a daily national middle-market tabloid newspaper in the United Kingdom. It is the flagship of Express Newspapers, a subsidiary of Northern & Shell (which is owned by publisher Trinity Mirror). It was first published as a broadsheet in 1900 by Sir Arthur Pearson. Its sister paper, the Sunday Express, was