10:20AM Clem Bastow | It must be that time of the year or something, you know, the time of the year when you read, gobsmacked, stories about how kindergarten nativity scenes are replaced by kids wearing sunnies and singing We Will Rock You, or about crooks making off with small businesses’ entire Christmas delivery of ham (and yes, we’ve actually read both).
Well, it’s time to put on your “What’s the world coming to?” hat again, because no one is safe from this modern hysteria: as if Border Security et al weren’t bad enough, now Paddington Bear is going to cop what’s coming to him when he’s
mistaken for an illegal immigrant.
Yes, you read correctly. And what’s worse, this is how they chose to celebrate his 50th birthday!
In the book, to be published next June on the anniversary of his debut in A Bear Called Paddington, the stowaway from Peru will be interviewed about his right to remain in England.
The appeal of Michael Bond’s Paddington books, which have sold more than 30 million copies and been translated into 30 languages, remains undiminished.
But Bond, 83, was said to be reluctant at the prospect of writing his first book about the bear for 29 years — unless he had a strong contemporary storyline.
After being arrested, Paddington has no papers proving his identity, because his Aunt Lucy had arranged for him to hide on a ship’s lifeboat from Peru after she went to live in a home for retired bears in Lima.
Oh yes, it’s a merry jape when the good old boys from MI5 pull your fingernails off with pliers so that you cough up the name of the bastards who brought you into Britain without permission!
Three cheers for the Home Guard, hip, hip, hip!
Seriously, what’s next? Play School’s Jemima being done for heroin trafficking? Elmo and Big Bird being busted for running a paedophile ring?
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