The Toby Twirl Story Book

Product Information

Toby Twirl is a young pig who walks upright. He has human hands and feet like Rupert Bear. The character is based upon a soft toy which was made by the wife of Edward Jeffrey. [2] Rupert Bear had the body of a human boy, and the head of a bear. Many of his friends had human bodies and animal heads, although other characters included humans, dwarves, ogres, and talking birds.

Importantly, many parallels with Tourtel's and Bestall's Rupert Bear are already clear. Other minor details include the use of running sub-headings that flag the next step in the story: “Toby Listens to the Bird’s Sad Story”. 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!

Memories

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.) Hodgetts is reported to have started her writing career in 1943, but no details of any early titles are known.

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. Each panel of Tourtel's comic strip story was accompanied by a narrative in rhymed verse. These are the very first ( Daily Express, 8 November 1920): Dropped in to see Hollie at the Joiners a while ago (probably a few years ago??) a pleasant chat although he was running the pub during our visit so the conversation was a bit short? Jim Routledge -original drummer with The Shades of Blue -22/8/11 for you to identify the Toby Twirl books, much more detail is available in the 'Collector's Guide' (seeIt seems incredible that it’s taken 50 years for pop-psych band Toby Twirl to release their first long player. The roots of the band started at Rutherford College in Newcastle in 1963 and originally named Shades Of Blue where Barry Sewell, Jim Routledge and Stu Someville who were all in the same form. From 1968 the band, now called Toby Twirl, released recorded three highly revered singles for Decca. In some later Toby Twirl stories, Hodgetts uses prose for the narrative, but most of her Toby Twirl stories rely on quatrains. There were a number of line-up changes for the band – can you talk us through the line-up changes from when you signed to split. Sheila Hodgetts was the daughter of the Managing Director of Sampson, Low, at that time a major children's publishing company, with the publishing rights for Tourtel's Rupert Bear Stories, and, later, Enid Blyton's “Noddy” stories, and many others. When did you become aware of the escalating prices for the Tony Twirl singles and the cult following for the band?

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. https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/invisible-ink-no-199-sheila-hodgetts-8904586.htmlWe 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? 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. 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?

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. Happily, the band have stayed in touch and there have been two reunions in Newcastle in the past couple of years. The second of which was attended by our erstwhile roadie, Colin Hart, who now lives in Florida. Colin went on to work for Mathews Southern Comfort, Deep Purple and Rainbow. Just as Rupert had his regular friends (most of them with human bodies, and animal heads – all about the same height, regardless of their different animal species - but also some who were all animal, and others who were wholly human), Toby Twirl has some regular friends. These include, Pete the Penguin, Eli the Elephant (also known, formally, as Eli Phant, his mother being Mrs Phant), Winnie the Wallaby, and a squirrel-headed fellow, as well as some less friendly folk, such as Warty Weasel. Adult characters, such as Mrs Twirl (and less frequently, Mr Twirl) tend to appear briefly at the start and end of the stories to express their relief at Toby's safe return. By contrast, Professor Bison (an actual bison, and an obvious homage to Tourtel's and Bestall's character the Wise Old Goat, an actual goat), is of frequent assistance. We did a couple of sessions for the BBC 50 years ago like dozens of other groups at the time. The BBC had what they called ‘needle time’ restrictions imposed by the Musicians Union and were limited to the amount of records they could play. Nothing has come to light on any compilation to my knowledge. As we did not have any hits the recordings were probably wiped years ago. Fifty years is a long time! There was a thriving live music scene in the late 60s – what were the most memorable venues and favourite groups you played on the bill with?The new album contains a lovely version of ‘Something’ – I assume The Beatles were a great influence on Toby Twirl? Working with several other illustrators (none with the pictorial quality of Jeffrey's art), Hodgetts had an extensive career as an author for several other series of children's books in the 1950s and early 1960s. These included “Sleepy Time Tales” - such as Sleepy Time Tales of Primrose Wood - a series of books that contained fifteen, or twelve, short (five minute) bedtime stories, often with a gentle moral at the end, and a light sense of humour, set in different locales, also including Apricot Farm, Happytown, Puddletown, Candytop Castle, Cuddleytown, Playtime Village, Playtown, Faraway Forest, The Pan Babies, and Sleepy Time Tales of the Little Cherubs. (More than one hundred short stories!) Toby Twirl (born in 1946), would have been at least sixty-one in 2007, but he doesn’t seem a day over ten, and still as resourceful as ever! There was a good camaraderie amongst the groups at the time, and the clubs seemed to be full every night. The famous ‘doubles’ were always fun when you would play a 10pm spot in one club and then drive somewhere to the other side of town to do a midnight show. The Princess and Domino Clubs were two such places which adopted this system.