Last week after the gym (it’s only January, it won’t last) I was talking to a few ladies and the conversation turned to a man they knew.
He had been a member of the gym too and sadly recently passed away.
They remembered him fondly – a real character in his eighties who ignored the “appropriate footwear” sign, donning brown brogues to exercise and letting heavy weights crash after lifting them, making everyone around him jump.
His name was Andy Robin. If you don’t recognise that name, you might remember the other guy in his family – a brown bear called Hercules.
Born in captivity in Kingussie Wildlife Park in the seventies, keepers said they had no room for the cub and if someone didn’t take him, he’d be put down. And so Andy, a professional wrestler who lived in Perthshire, bought him for £50.
Here started a tale of a bear cherished like a child by Andy and his wife, with the wrestler training him and turning him into a Hollywood star who featured alongside Roger Moore in Bond movie Octopussy.
The story was all new to me. But if you’re in your mid-forties plus, I’ll bet the details sit with you like folklore.
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In 1980, Hercules escaped while filming a Kleenex ad on Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides. Hundreds of volunteers looked for him before calling off the search – though Andy never gave up. On day 24 of being AWOL, a crofter spotted the grizzly swimming between islands. He had lost 15 stone – half of his bodyweight – the reason being he had developed a liking for the cooked food he got at home and so ignored the live cattle and animals he could have eaten on the isles.
That a bear would rather starve than kill made him even more of a global star and Kleenex cleaned up, rebranding the bear the Big Softie like their hankies.
These and many more stories – like the time Hercules had a pint at the relaunch of the Powrie Bar in Fintry – can be found online.
But the tales the ladies I met painted added life and colour to Hercules and his owner.
Like the time Andy realised Hercules had reached an adult size and that he’d have to “take him on” as a bear would in the wild, to show who was boss. So Andy squared up to his furry pal and kept his nerve, not entirely sure if he’d live to tell the tale – and Hercules backed down and never challenged him again, happy in the role of teddy bear in the Robin household. In 2001, Hercules died aged 25.
But what warms the cockles for me is Andy. Maybe we can’t all go around adopting bears, but what would the world be without those who don’t follow the rules rigidly and think a little outside the box?
Andy enriched not only his life but that of that wee cub and an untold number of people who enjoyed their antics along the way.
RIP Andy Robin and of course, Hercules the Bear.
This article originally appeared on the Evening Telegraph website. For more information, read about our new combined website.