Regular readers may recall our three previous appeals concerning the welfare of London's teddy bear population. Homelessness among ursine simulacra is a growing problem, towards which the mainstream press remain studiously myopic. Sure, they've devoted tens of column inches to Pudsey the posterbear over the past week. But have they ever asked him about his history? Have they? Beneath that spotty bandanna, the Children in Need mascot bears (ho ho) the scars of his streetfighting past. That's right. Before he was famous, Pudsey led a hobo existence, unloved and alone like so many soft toys (a plight first exposed in 1980's documentary The Raggydolls). In exchange for a bed, the outcast Pudsey would regularly engage in fierce paw-to-paw combat with other London bears, and lost an eye to notorious gangland plaything, Winston T. Pooh of the Hundred Acre Wood Estate. In a fortuitous outcome, the recovering Pudsey was spotted by Terry Wogan, who was in the same hospital ward having his BLANK removed. The rest is history.
Pudsey's story of rags to riches is an atypical case. Most of London's street bears end up drunk on honey mead, prostrate in the gutter, face down in a pool of their own fire-retardant vomit. The unfortunate fellow pictured above was spotted on the streets of Notting Hill by reader sa1000. It doesn't have to be this way.
Help us help the bears. Send in your grisly grizzly snaps of discarded bears to londonist - at - gmail.com so we can document this insidious social disease.
