Toby Twirl Tourtel, an assistant editor of the "Daily Express". Tourtel devised Rupert Bear shortly after the end of World War I, in 1920, when the "Daily Express" was in competition with "The Daily Mail" and its then popular comic strip “Teddy Tail” (featuring a mouse called “Teddy Tail”), as well as with the comic strip “Pip, Squeak and Wilfred” (respectively, these are the names of a dog, penguin, and rabbit) in the "Daily Mirror". Each panel of Tourtel's comic strip story was accompanied by a narrative in rhymed verse. These are the very first ("Daily Express", 8 November 1920): The title
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