The Invisible Womble

Orinoco is certainly the tubbiest of the Wombles and is perhaps the Womble who needs the most encouragement to go out on the daily sortie to clear up and recycle all the rubbish that humans leave behind . . . Meanwhile, Tobermory, DIY-er extraordinaire, is getting to grips with the one of the humans' more ingenious inventions: the vacuum cleaner!

Elisabeth Beresford first came up with the idea for the Womble characters when walking on Wimbledon Common with her two children. She started sketching out the characters that day: Great Uncle Bulgaria was based on her father-in-law, Tobermory on her brother (an inventor), Orinoco on her son, and Madame Cholet on her mother. She hoped that the Wombles stories would encourage children to fight pollution and to think up ways of 'making good use of bad rubbish'. In fact, the Wombles so charmed the nation that they were chosen as the mascots for the Tidy Britain campaign. Since then they have had their own television series, first broadcast on Jackanory.
Elisabeth Beresford was awarded an MBE for her services to children's literature in 1998.