Who is Bear, Part 1

I'm sure that most, as indeed did I, think just who is this Bear character? Well, he is a little bit more well-known than you might think.

In the first edition of a short series, Bear looks back to when he first appeared in the BBC TV series, Outnumbered.

I was really excited. It was my first big break since I'd moved all the chairs around after the school play a few years ago. I'd just moved into my bedsit in London, when I saw an advert. It said "Bears wanted to appear in new BBC comedy". I went down to the audition, and sang a couple of songs from my album (Bip Bop) and did a couple of dances. I got the part straight away.
The first scene that they wanted me to do was to appear on the bed with some other toys. Of course I was much more talented than all of them, and I really wanted to showcase my talent. I asked if I could. They said, "Yes you can, Bear. This comedy is not totally scripted, and we are allowing the actors to ad-lib from time to time, so if you want to do the same, go for it!"

This made me so excited. I nearly wee'd myself there and then, but I held it in. As the scene got closer, I also became nervous. The only thing that could stop me being nervous was to have a little tipple of Whiskey. I'm afraid that I may have had a little bit too much by the time the actual thingy came around. The room was spinning.

When the scene was on, I was in so much of a pickle, I didn't know what to do so I just put my head against the pillow and did nothing. I might have fallen asleep. I don't remember. When I watched it back, the microphone didn't pick up any snoring.

Mommy and Daddy Bear were very proud of me.

I remember when I was a little Bear, I found it hard to do that thing where you have to say numbers and what they come to (Bear is referring to Times Tables) or something like that. I would really struggle when it came to the high numbers like three. I mean, what is the point of them anyway? It's not as if you use them in real life, is it? One day, I came home from school crying, because Pengy Wengy (Bear's best friend at school) was bragging that he'd just done twelve. And he didn't stop at twelve times twelve. He went up to thirteen or something like that. Mommy Bear put her arm around me and explained that although I wasn't the brightest button, I could still become anything I wanted.
Those words inspired me, and within a few weeks I could reel off these stupid things in my sleep [research shows that Bear successfully recounted his one times table up to ten times one].

I came bouncing into the house the day I did it at school. Mommy and Daddy Bear were so proud. That's about how proud of me they were when I was on the TV!

Roughly transcribed from conversation with Bear

You can of course see Outnumbered on Netflix, and also buy the DVDs from major retailers.

You can hear more from Bear in My ZX Spectrum and other Stories, available on the Amazon Kindle Store. You can also borrow it if you subscribe to Kindle Unlimited.