Billy Bunter

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Billy Bunter, the "Fat Owl of the Remove", is a fictional character created by Charles Hamilton (using the nom de plume of Frank Richards) for stories set at Greyfriars School in the boys' weekly magazine The Magnet (published from 1908 to 1940). George Orwell acknowledged the strength of the character in his essay "Boys' Weeklies" (1940):

Bunter, though in his origin he probably owed something to the fat boy in Pickwick, is a real creation. His tight trousers against which boots and canes are constantly thudding, his astuteness in search of food, his postal order which never turns up, have made him famous wherever the Union Jack waves [1]

There was a previous Billy Bunter character, created by H Philpott Wright, who appeared in a series of stories in Vanguard Library from 1907 (such as "Billy Bunter's Hamper"). Hamilton was also a contributor to Vanguard, but in turn claimed to have first used the Bunter name in a rejected story of 1899.^{[citation needed]}

Although Billy Bunter later became famous in his own right, he was not particularly the "star" of the original Magnet stories. These were straightforward school stories in which virtually all of the Remove featured to some extent, especially the "Famous Five" of Harry Wharton, Bob Cherry, Frank Nugent, Johnny Bull and Hurree Jamset Ram Singh (known as "Inky"). Billy Bunter's famous cry of "yarooh!" was, of course, "hooray! spelt backwards.

The Magnet ceased publication in 1940, at issue 1683, due to the paper shortage and ensuing costs during war-time. There had been at least four more issues already written, but these were never published and are now presumed lost. After the war, Hamilton wrote a new series of books in which Bunter was more or less the main character. Bunter brings to bear some unique skills such as ventriloquism, which he uses with telling effect; he also tends to solve mysteries by bumbling across the solution.

Billy Bunter was played by Gerald Campion in a BBC television series from 1952 to 1961.

[edit] Later References

Enid Blyton may have borrowed the term "Famous Five" for her own series of adventure stories. Her Frederick Trotteville, aka Fatty, character from the Five Find-Outers series also shows some similarities to Bunter.

Bunter was the model for Cyril, a mischievous but sinister schoolboy, played by Peter Stephens, who appeared in the Doctor Who serial The Celestial Toymaker on BBC television in 1966.^{[citation needed]}

There was talk of putting a Billy Bunter character into the children's series Grange Hill but it was rejected. ^{[citation needed]}

In the 1980s, a chain of fast food restaurants called Bunter's experienced brief success in Britain. These restaurants prominently featured images of Billy Bunter but did nothing else to evoke the Greyfriars atmosphere, selling standard fast food when they might have offered "school dinners".