Origami.

Our local U3A group had a talk about Rupert Bear this afternoon proving the point that a good speaker can make anything interesting - thit particular speaker being a retired professor.

Rupert Bear was created by the English artist Mary Tourtel and first appearing in the Daily Express newspaper in 1920, his purpose being to win sales from the rivals: Daily Mail and Daily Mirror. In 1935 Tourtel's failing eyesight forced her into retirement and her role was taken over by the very successful artist, Alfred Bestall RA. When he accepted the role, he didn't realise that it included writing the stories but he proved to be much more successful as both illustrator and story-teller than his predecessor; he worked on Rupert for nearly 30 years until he resigned over an artistic dispute with the Express. Since then, various other artists and writers have continued the series which is still running

Amongst other things, Bestall was president of the British Origami Society, as a consequence, the “Rupert Bear Annual” usually featured a little paper project related to one of the stories; the blip is of a spark fairy brought along by “The Prof.” I remember making a Chinese junk from the instructions in one of my annuals; I last made one from memory about twenty years ago, today I needed a little (and only a little) help from Google.

Most of the characters in the series are anthropomorphic animals (animals with humanoid forms). They are all scaled to be about the same size as Rupert, regardless of species. Rupert's animal friends are usually referred to as his "chums" or "pals". Aside from his best friend Bill Badger, some of the most enduring pals include an elephant (Edward Trunk), Pong-Ping the Pekingese, Algy Pug (who actually pre-dates Rupert, we met a pug called Algy on Portobello Beach a couple of months ago) and Bingo the Brainy Pup (a caricature of Bestall).

For details of my Origami junk look here.