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BBC2 viewers watched in awe at the unlikely true story of a Scottish wrestler raising a 65 stone grizzly bear he treated ‘like a son’.
Hercules The Bear aired on Tuesday night and recounted how Maggie Robin, 74, and her late husband Andy, a professional wrestler, bought the ‘wee boy’ from a Scottish wildlife park for just £50 in 1974.
The couple, who didn’t have children and lived on a sprawling ranch in Scotland’s Ochil Hills, shared their lives with him for a quarter of a century and saw him become a Hollywood star.
Viewers took to X after watching the show, as they praised the ‘brilliant and hilarious’ stories Maggie recounted about Hercules’ life.
They wrote: ‘Highly recommend everyone watching ‘Hercules the Bear’ on BBC absolutely hilarious and brilliant viewing’;
‘So weird’; ‘Just watched Hercules the bear on iPlayer – the saddest part is the couple never had children and chose to raise Hercules’;
‘I saw #Hercules the bear (and his bus) in Nairn as a kid’; If you love animals, Hercules the Bear on #BBC2 is great.’
The couple would prepare meals, including spaghetti bolognese and M&S prawns for Hercules, and he would share a pint with Andy – and even the odd glass of Babycham, the sparkling perry popular in the early 80s.
The bear would drink his morning tea from a mug and could sit up at the table to blow out the candles on his birthday cake. At night he would sprawl in front of the fire.
The new documentary followed Andy’s death from cancer in December 2019 aged 84 and saw Maggie detailing how the couple’s lives revolved around the bear they called ‘son’.
Such was the fascination with the unique family’s lives, Hercules ended up touring the world, met Margaret Thatcher and even landed a role opposite Roger Moore in the 1983 Bond film Octopussy.
Another job, promoting the tissue company Kleenex in a TV commercial in 1980, saw the family temporarily ripped apart, when the brown bear went missing on set.
He fled during filming for the ‘Big Softy’ advert, which was taking place in remote Benbecula in the Outer Hebrides.
A huge military operation, which gripped the nation, was launched in an attempt to find Hercules, but for more than three weeks there was no sign of him.
Maggie said afterwards: ‘We were up in a helicopter and looking at everything down below. I couldn’t understand why I couldn’t see this great big thing moving about. But he would be frightened, and his natural instinct was to hide.’
‘Herc’ finally emerged 24 days later, weighing 15 stone less after a dramatic rescue involving a helicopter and a net. The moment he was lowered from the aircraft into the back of a truck made global news.
The Robins’ ‘boy’ quickly became a household name; Hercules was voted Personality of the Year by the Scottish Tourist Board in 1980.
Such was the bear’s reputation that, driving down the motorway in their specially adapted bus, the Robins would see police lights flashing behind them and panic, only to have the officers ask: ‘Can we have a look at the big fellow?’
In 2000, after months of deterioration following a back injury, devastating to a beast of Hercules’s size, the bear succumbed to illness.
A statue was later erected of Hercules at Langass Woods, on the Scottish island of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides, to commemorate the bear famously outstaying his welcome.
The programme also explored how Maggie and her late husband met at the Perth Show when she was just 21 and he was 37; she describes the charismatic wrestler with ‘piercing blue eyes’ as her ‘mother’s worst nightmare’.
The couple’s marriage proved tumultuous at times, with the bear putting a strain on their relationship…because, Robin said, Andy was ‘besotted’ by the brown bear they’d welcomed into their lives.
The wrestler’s close family and friends say the wrestler ‘never recovered from losing Hercules’.
The bear was originally buried in the garden of the home the family lived in Clackmannanshire, Scotland.
However, after the Robins sold their home they decided to have the bear’s remains disinterred and reburied beneath the life-size statue erected in his honour in North Uist.
The low key burial saw the grizzly’s remains lowered into the ground inside a giant coffin with the help of a JCB just next to the wooden bear statue which is visited by thousands every year.
