Pencilsqueezer has some serious competition. This week on SVT there was a rather charming news story about Jusoo the Finnish bear artist who has just had a vernissage. He’s a very visceral artist. He covers his bum in paint and then rolls around on the canvas. His art works (the proceeds of which go to the bear orphanage where he lives) are making some serious money. There was some wonderful “unbuttoned” footage of him lounging around on a large table in the forest looking rather pleased with himself.
Yes, as the storm clouds gather, the New Dark Ages loom, the End is Nigher than ever and we stumble into the Twilight Zone of the post-truth era, it seems like an appropriate moment to ask: who is your favourite animal celebrity?
Here are a few of mine: old and new.
Lulu the elephant whose appearance on Blue Peter was a protopunk Pistols moment for pachyderms
Stoffel the honey badger with balls of steel who broke out of his own enclosure in order to break into the lions’ area and then take on the Alpha male
Chi Chi, the London Zoo giant panda whose relationship problems cast a shadow over my childhood years
TV star Skippy the Kangaroo. Roos, I am reliably informed, are as thick as two eucalyptus planks and are as useful in a crisis as a hamster on Valium. Yet here was a marsupial who was your go-to guy when things got sticky
Anybody else got a favourite?
Please interpret celebrity as broadly as you wish. If they’ve made the local paper, they are in.
Kaisfatdad says
On that flagship of British children’s TV Blue Peter, Lulu paves the way for the Pistols.
Mike_H says
I too remember poor old Chi-Chi the panda and his relationship problems with that cold-hearted femme fatale An-An.
On the Tellybox I can just about recall canine marvel Rin-Tin-Tin and of course Champion, The Wonder Horse. Flipper the dolphin was an interesting later aquatic variation.
In comics there was of course our own Lassie, the trusty sheepdog.
As I grew older my enthusiasm for animal heroes declined, but was revived a few years ago by this..
Kaisfatdad says
Well that was an unusual start to the day. Blissed out badgers doing aerobics.
How odd that one used to watch the news at the cinema. Pathe News discontinued in 1970.
Before this thread fizzles out, here is something rather remarkable: an elephant that can draw a simple, childlike image of an elephant.
SteveT says
Here is proof we have competition:-
Junior Wells says
The chimp in Daktari amused me.
Then there is that alsatian in Inspector Rex.
Mr Ed was a favourite though that is showing my age big time
But I think it has to be Arnold Ziffle the pig in Green Acres
Harold Holt says
The elephants at Western Plains zoo out in Dubbo paint, and it’s for sale. Wasn’t to my taste, a little too similar to year 3 school exhibition output. But what do i know.
Kaisfatdad says
Arnold brightened my day. Eva Gabor’s outfits are totally incredible too.
With that creature in the White House, a pig in a hotel seems not so far-fetched.