The Wombles

The Wombles was a television documentary in 1970 directed by British underground reporter Elisabeth Beresford.
The Wombles were radioactively deformed migrant workers from secret diamond mines under London, England. Many had been hideously transformed into pointy-nosed furry creatures that had taken to living in shanty towns full of underground burrows. The term 'Womble' came from a frightful experience Beresford had when first meeting a deformed worker where he moaned at her before his death that he just wanted to go home, his slurred warped tongue sounding as if he said "wom..ble..grr..hmm". This mentally scarring event led Beresford to coin the phrase The Wombles.
The drama showed the daily plight of two of the families who's employers had banished them after the diamond mines collapsed and work ordered to halt. With most of the workers dead, only a handful remained living under the very ground people walked on, venturing up only at night to claim bits and pieces in which to continue their lives alone.
Elisabeth Beresford looked past their deformities and tried to show their human side to a forgetful public and an even more forgetful government in order to gain these people real lives above ground. The documentary focused particularly on one family, the McNulty's. The Leader of the Womble race is a Mr Craig Goldsmith of Wimbledon. He is said to be a cross between a wombat and a weasel he can often be found "doing" things that could get him arrested. He is also usually considered to be a speck due to his lack of general knowledge.
==Species Information==
The Wombles can be found underground or overground, wombling free. They are beneath Wimbledon Common. They make good use of the things that they find, usually the type of thing the everyday folk leave behind. 
Uncle Bulgaria (see below) can remember the days when he wasn't behind The Times, with his map of the world. They normally spend their day picking up the papers and taking them to Tobermory (see below the other bit). 
Wombles are organised, they work as a team. Wombles are tidy and Wombles are clean. Underground, overground, wombling free, the Wombles of Wimbledon Common, they are.
People don't notice them, they never see, under their noses a Womble may be. They can Womble by night and they can Womble by day, looking for litter to trundle away.
They're so incredibly, utterly devious, making the most of everything (even bottles and tins). Picking up the pieces and turning them into something new, that's what they do. 
The Wombles can be found underground or overground, wombling free. They are beneath Wimbledon Common. They make good use of the things that they find, usually the type of thing the everyday folk leave behind.
The practice of Womble hunting by using ferrets and netting the Womble burrows was banned along with fox hunting in 1998. The ferrets had been injured by the sport and was considered cruel and unnecessary.
==Great Uncle Bulgaria McNulty==
He is very old and wise, aged 83 he is the oldest of the miners. He could often be found reading his newspaper sitting in his rocking chair and just being lazy due to his massive crack addiction, born from the pain of his deformities. He is good at telling the young Wombles the history of their world, in order to continue the hatred his people feel for the company who left them here years before. The stories, told with such venom and trippy eloquence mean the young Wombles never get bored of his stories.
==Tobermory McNulty==
Tobermory is the lead miner and handyman wobble. His assisstant is often Wellington Robyn. Tobermory is a hardworking womble who although he holds a darker side. His years of anger at the loss of his brother when the mines collapsed mean he has fallen into drink and Sex, which the documentary often showed in graphic scenes. One scene showed him in a Bourbon-fuelled orgy with many other Wombles,having sex, aging from 14 to 63. With little disapline in the womble world there is nothing his womble friends can do but look on and hope one day his pain can be lifted.
==Orinoco Robyn==
Orinoco is a fat, overweight Womble. His love of Food has kept him upbeat in his years underground. His comfort eating, Beresford reasons, shows what stress can do to a person and relates it to childrens eating of the time. He has a jolly outlook on life despite being one of the most deformed of the Womble people. Many wombles worry he will eat himself to death before the deformaties kill his already short life, but other think that as long as he is happy he should be left alone, as very little do their people find happiness. The sexual act known as Orinoco Flow is often performed as an act of reverence to its namesake.
==Wellington Robyn==
Wellington is a scientifically-inclined Womble. He devises all sorts of inventions that the Womble people use to hunt out useful things to continue building their world. He often helps Tobermory and comes up with most of his inventions while high. He smokes so much dope that once he thought he was a dingo and ate one of Madam Cholets babies, to which she ripped him a new arsehole, meaning he can now shit in two separate directions, which actually inspired him to his greatest invention, a car that can drive in two directions at once, meaning explorer Wombles could cover twice as much area at once!
==Madame Cholet==
Madame Cholet is the main Womble cook and makes all their foodstuffs and drugs. Prior to being deformed she was a Nun and reconsiles herself with God now in the way that she keeps the Womble people going in any way she can through cookery. She believes that even though he methods may not be perfect that her pure spirit will keep her on God's good side.
== Story Twist ==
At the end of the documentary, it is found out that these entire people are in fact a hoax. After telling a harrowing story that captured the thoughts of a nation and had the government clamouring to give aid, the Womble people showed themselves to be a fraud, using clever mirror techniques and high quality make-ups to portray their world as truthful. The whole thing was orchestrated by TV presenter, Ant McPartlin, after finding out his girlfriend of three years (Beresford) had cheated on him with his best friend, fellow presenter Declan Donnelly.
Having fully shamed Beresford, she retracted from the limelight eventually taking her own life, scrawling "The Wombles of Wimbledon, coming for me..." on the wall in her own blood, echoing what one Womble told her in her documentary when she asked if he had anything to say to the people above ground Wombles of Wimbledon, coming are we!
Ant and Dec put their argument behind them, and to help them forget the incident, traveled into the future where they had successful TV careers, both acting and presenting (plus a short lived pop career also).
==See also==
*London Underground
*Cave - A usual living place for a Womble
Category:British television programmes
Category:Mammals