Other Toby Twirl materials created by Hodgetts included daily newspaper comic strips, such as for The Yorkshire Evening Post, beginning in 1959. These led to several small landscape-format “strip books”, such as Toby Twirl on Dapple Heath and Toby Twirl and the Talking Poodle (ca. 1954), and Toby Twirl and the Bullfighter, and Toby Twirl and the Marionette. There were also colouring books, magic colouring books (using water), and pop-up books, and jigsaw puzzles. Twirl Adventure Books', and other items. Toby Twirl was a popular children's story character, similar in

The first book, Toby in Pogland, was produced in large format and published in 1946. Four other large format books followed. The standard sized annual format, also published in 1946, began a series that continued until 1958, totalling 14 in all. There were also other formats including small strip books, pop-up books and jigsaws. A series of 8 Toby Twirl Tales, each with two stories, were published between 1950 and 1954. [1] The Stories [ edit ] With Jeffrey's illustrations, Sheila Hodgetts also published two non-Toby-Twirl titles: the fairy tale story, The Sleeping City (1947), in which, of course, a magic spell must be broken to wake a sleeping city; and One Magic Night (1947), in which young Terence ventures out, one magic night, to watch the fairies dance, but is bound in magic cobweb by some unpleasant pixies, until a friend, Rufus, a rabbit, brings the Fairy Queen to rescue the boy.There’s also a reggae influenced version of The Everly Brother’s ‘When Will I Be Loved’ – it works really well. Whose idea was this? The new album is a mix of original material and popular covers – is this reflective of the material you played in your live shows? The title of this very first “Rupert Bear” newspaper comic strip was “Little Lost Bear”. It also had a short explanatory subtitle: “Mrs. Bear sends her little son Rupert to market”. Toby's friends are Eli (an elephant) and Pete (a penguin), both of whom generally accompany him on his adventures. Most of the stories are written in rhyming couplets. Several of the stories take place in Dillyland, a country of small humans that Toby and friends manage to reach using a miniature railway line with an engine called The Dillypuff crewed by Clem and Joe. There is also a boat called The Dillypaddle. As you'd expect from such stories Toby and friends often accidentally get into trouble or happen upon some villains during their adventures, somehow managing to overcome their difficulties and save the day.

They were a GREAT inspiration to me in the late 60s and I went on to have more than FORTY years in the biz working all over Europe and I was billed as 'the ultimate party host'. I met Stews' parents in Kennersdene may years ago and they were SO lovely, they invited me in for tea to chat over all the good times, thank you to them. I STILL have copies of the singles, 'Movin' In' and 'Harry Faversham' and should any of the boys like to have them, PLEASE drop me a line or call 01302 789 846, I do hope that they go to a 'good cause'. I am retired now and living in Doncaster, PLEASE give me call! Through the 1920s and 1930s, it is unclear who was the creator of the verses used in Rupert's stories. For example, Caroline G. Bott's The Life and Works of Alfred Bestall: Illustrator of Rupert Bear, Bloomsbury, London, 2003, pp 71, 72, reports Alfred Bestall's recollections that, in 1935, “a lady … did Mary Tourtel’s late verse captions (not Hilda Coe)”, and also that her husband, H.B. Tourtel had “[written] the verse”. Similarly, when Bestall was assigned the task of replacing Tourtel after she retired, Bott quotes at length a Daily Express article by Hilda Coe, 7 November 1945, on the anniversary of Rupert's Silver Jubilee. According to Coe, when Bestall began on 28 June 1935, “he could not write verse, and the youngest readers demanded verse, not once but many times. And so, early in 1936, the Daily Express asked me [Coe] to translate Rupert into verse”: Bott p 27.) Mary Tourtel (1874-1948) was a children's illustrator, married to Herbert Bird 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. Sheila Hodgetts’ artistic collaborator, Edward Jeffrey, created Toby Twirl, visually (albeit, in a Rupert-like mould), basing Toby on a soft toy that his wife was making at the time. Hodgett's must have explained, also, that the name “Twirl”, related to the pig-features of the character, and, by implication, Toby's parents, including, in the early stories, an eponymous pig's twirly corkscrew tail. Toby is always looking for something to do, although not always as careful as he might be. For example, in the “annual” Toby Twirl Adventure Stories (1948), which includes a Grimms’-like story of enchantment, “Toby Twirl and the Magic Drum”, the following story – which introduces the secondary, but otherwise realistic world of Dillyland – “Toby and the Dilly-Puff”, Toby and his friend Eli Phant are happily wandering around their village neighbourhood.

We were half way through our act when suddenly the audience (mostly pensioners) got out of their seats and started to run towards the stage. I thought we were going to get invaded, was this Saga Mania? Hi John – This is the first time there’s been a full length Toby Twirl release. How did this come about and can you tell me more about the record?