🧸 Did You Know That Jeremy Clarkson's Mother Designed The First Paddington Bear Toy?

Oh, wow!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
And Amanda Jamn.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
I do want to watch Clarkson's Farm, and it's becoming
a bit like Game of Thrones for me.

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Now you haven't left it too late. They're very easy
to watch. You can watch three episodes at once. They're
so charming.

Speaker 2 (00:13):
And I like Jeremy clarks Well, I never did broadcaster
and a journalist.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
Harley had always loved top gear and so I thought,
thought of this cantankerous, not Harley. I thought that Jeremy
Clarkson was a cantankerous old.

Speaker 3 (00:25):
Yeah, well he is.

Speaker 1 (00:26):
He is, and I didn't like him for it. And
Harley said, you're going to love this new show, and
I didn't want to. And I've fallen in love with it.
I'm up to series four.

Speaker 3 (00:33):
But I read his columns. He used to write in
the Sunday Times.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
I think there was a book came out and what
a great writer, such a good turn of phrase.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Well, in this show, he's very kind, and he's funny,
and he's vulnerable and all the things that I didn't
that I didn't think it would.

Speaker 3 (00:45):
You like that? That's your thing? You want kind people.

Speaker 1 (00:48):
I want kind people and who wouldn't and people who
can who allow themselves to be the butt of a joke,
which he does in this series because he's out of
his depth trying to run this farm. But listen to
this story that I saw yesterday.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Do you know?

Speaker 1 (00:59):
His mother does iron and created the very first Paddington
Bear toy in the early seventies. So the prototype she
made for Jeremy and his sister, it says he later
became a licensed product that funded his education, helped launch
his TV career, though reading more closely, it was she
they almost got in trouble for it. His late mother,
she passed away not so long ago, made a Christmas

(01:21):
present to her children one year of a Paddington Bear prototype.
She thought, isn't this good? Because the toy was admired
by all their friends, So she and her husband Eddie
began making unofficial Paddington Bear Teddy Bears in the seventies
and selling them at the local shops. But the book
came first, so the Paddington Bear author Michael Bond heard

(01:41):
about them being sold without his knowledge and was considering
suing them for copyright infringement.

Speaker 3 (01:47):
I thought that she came up with Paddington Bear.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
No, so the stories already just risked it off. She said,
I'm going to make that toy in the seventies. It's
up for grabs. But listen to this. A chance meeting
between the author, Michael Bond, and the Clarksons in a
lift where they were introduced by a mutual acquaintance sounds
like it's a setup to me. Brought a resolution to
this conflict. So during the conversation, the two parties struck

(02:10):
a deal so that Shirley and Eddie were able to
continue manufacturing and selling the bear toys. So the author
said to the Sunday Times, just last year, I got
in a lift with Shirley and Eddie. They were terribly
nice and pretended it had pretended it had all been
a mistake, and we were friends by the time we
got out of the lift. I gave them the license.

(02:33):
And so Shirley died in twenty fourteen. And she said
that a son may not have had his successful TV
career without her innovation because it funded his education. That's
why he wears those boots and those big jackets, because
he wants to still dressed like Pattison.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
There. My mum used to make bort shorts like Billabong.
She said they were like billabongs.

Speaker 1 (02:54):
Made of chain mail and.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
Flannel and anvils. Go for a swim made off you.

Speaker 1 (03:01):
Go and carry my sewing machine while you're adding