Mr Benn turns 50: 8 things you didn’t know about the man in the bowler hat
From the name of his street, to the inspiration behind the fancy dress shop, here's what you need to know about the beloved children's character.
Children of the Seventies and Eighties will remember the plinky plonky music and turning wheel of costumes that marked the start of Mr Benn, arguably one of the gentlest but most extraordinary children’s cartoons ever created.
“It was Saturday morning in Festive Road, coal was being delivered and boys were playing with wooden swords, everything was very ordinary. This is an ordinary street…” intones narrator Ray Brooks at the opening of the first episode, Red Knight.
But what happens next is not ordinary at all, as Mr Benn, invited to a fancy dress party, goes in search of a suitable costume. In a back street, he finds a fancy dress shop, where “as if by magic, the shopkeeper appeared” and allows him to try on a red suit of armour.
Over the course of 13 episodes, originally shown in 1971 and ’72, and then repeated a staggering 42 times over the next 21 years, Mr Benn revisits the shop and has adventures that fit whichever costume he’s trying on, from flying into space, to taming a pirate.
The original Red Knight, in which Mr Benn defends a dragon, was not a cartoon at all, but a story book that children’s author and illustrator David McKee wrote in 1967. It captured imaginations at the BBC, who approached David to make a series for Watch With Mother.
As Mr Benn celebrates his 50th anniversary, 82-year-old David reveals some of the inspirations behind the character – and discusses the next big (Hollywood) adventure…
1. The character of Mr Benn was partly inspired by Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin
Mr Benn in his famous bowler hat
“I tried to base him on being a nobody in a way, but the people that I’ve loved over the years, like Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin and others, they’ve had that same dark suits and bowler hats look. When I was in the cubs, in fact, I was in a play and I had to be a detective and wear a bowler hat in that, so bowler hats have been there for quite a long time I think,” says David with a laugh.
2. The shopkeeper’s Fez was based on one of David’s hats
The shopkeeper in his fez
“I have quite a few hats and somebody gave me a Fez at one time and I just thought, ‘I have to use this! Somebody has to wear this’, and of course, when the shopkeeper came out, there he was with a Fez on him and I thought, ‘Oh, well, that’s fair enough’. Even the stories, it’s amazing how they’re affected by your ordinary life without you even realising it.”
3. The fancy dress shop was based on an antiques shop in Devon
“It was a mix of antiques and second hand stuff in a back street in Plymouth, where nothing ever seemed to change and the guy obviously wasn’t interested in selling anything, so something else was going on I always thought. But [the shop] grew out of various things, it’s difficult to say exactly where it came from.”
4. A Mr Benn film and an opera are in the works
Caveman Mr Benn
“The libretto [for the opera] is written and the Welsh National Opera did a production of the first part of it. That would be really exciting, because everybody has films, but to have an opera, that’s a bit special.
“The film is quite advanced, it’s more than talk, they’ve actually got a script which people like and we’re waiting on a day-to-day basis to find out if it’s likely to go ahead, but it will go ahead with somebody, I think,” says David, adding that Jack Lemmon would have been perfect for the part of Mr Benn – or Johnny Depp.
“I’m not involved at all with it. It’s like your children; you have to let them grow up, watch what they do, they can make mistakes, you try to guide them, but now my children are older than I am!
5. Festive Road was named after the London street David lived on
Mr Benn lived at No 52 Festive Road
“In reality it’s Festing Road [in Putney], and I changed it to Festive because Festing doesn’t sound too good!” he says, adding that in real life, he and his family lived at number 54, next door to Mr Benn at number 52.
“I have three children and the youngest is 52, so the first book would have come out when he was about two and I’ve drawn them in that first book and I’m looking out of the window.
“The residents wanted to change the name of the road to Festive, but that was too complicated. But there’s a walk unnamed at the bottom of Festing Road, which joins with another road, and they’ve now named that Festive Walk, which is amazing.”
6. David McKee had no previous experience in children’s TV
“It was much simpler back then, I was given a free hand by the BBC, I’d never made films before and they said, ‘How will you make them?’ And I said, ‘Well I’ll ask somebody’. I had a rough idea about how the films could work and not too much animation because the budget was very limited.
“I did the detailed drawings, which we did a lot of camera movement on, but it was much more homemade. And also, there was a series of just 13, nowadays they start with much bigger series, but also television was different, there were very few channels at that time and not everybody had television.
“My parents didn’t have television. About the time Mr Benn was due to come out, they would go into a local television shop and ask them to put the television on to BBC so they could watch it, they explained to the guy and he was fine!”
7. He’s also famous for the Elmer books, Not Now Bernard and King Rollo
“It’s about this time of year I finish another picture book – I’m very busy working on Elmer at the moment – I do about one a year, so this one will be for next year some time.
“The routine is really: Any time I can get to the table to draw or get to the easel to paint, I do. But everybody’s lives, especially as you get older, they seem to get blocked up by so many things, like family things or VAT, odd stuff, or getting the plumber in because something’s gone wrong in the bathroom.”
8. There’s a little bit of Mr Benn in David
David McKee
“There must be I guess because all art they say is self-portraiture… Certainly in the philosophy, I suppose, because he’s not really a superhero or anything, he’s more of a catalyst, or he suggests things and just says, ‘Why don’t you do this?’ – the way he tells them to make the bridge in the circus, he’s a very quiet kind of hero.”
Fifty Years of Mr Benn with David McKee is at the Illustrationcupboard Gallery in London until September 16. Visit illustrationcupboard.com
The Press Association
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