The Wombles are pointy-nosed furry creatures that live in burrows, where they help the environment by collecting and recycling rubbish in useful and ingenious ways. This "green" message was ahead of its time in the 1970s. Although Wombles live in every country in the world, the stories focus on the life of the Wimbledon Common burrow in London, England. Beresford reportedly invented the name "Womble" when one of her young children referred to Wimbledon Common as "Wombledon Common".CHARACTERS Great Uncle Bulgaria (the Wombles' leader) Tobermory (engineer and handyman) Orinoco (overweight shirker) Bungo (over-enthusiastic and bossy) Tomsk (athletic Womble) Wellington (scientifically inclined) Madame Cholet (a cook) Alderney (Madame Cholet's assistant) Shansi (often paired with Alderney, as Bungo was with Orinoco) Miss Adelaide (schoolmistress) Stepney (East Ender with dreadlocks)FACTS In the episode of Bottom entitled S' Out, Richie and Eddie hunt for Wombles in Wimbledon Common using chocolate hobnobs (a type of biscuit) as bait. The Wombles were criticised because children who went to Wimbledon common deliberately threw litter in the hope of seeing a womble. In one episode of Barking Mad, a British animal-behavior program, presenter and veterinarian Mark Evans works with staff at the Edinburgh Zoo to creatively recycle dustbin weights and traffic cones into fish-dispensers for the zoo's penguins, who had been hand-fed for decades; zoo staff wanted the penguins to be able to feed underwater as is natural for them. One zoo worker commented (after their initial success)that it was difficult to drive past a skip without looking inside to see if there was anything else they could use in the penguin enclosure. Mark Evans remarks, "You're the Wombles of Edinburgh Zoo...and Welfare Award-winning Wombles at that!"
