I now know what it feels like to be James Bond. The scene was the Belgian customs house at Ostend. Eddie, my husband, and I were on an ill-conceived and ill-fated trip to Cologne. God! I can’t believe how stupid we were.

We approached customs with a cheery smile. They were more than a little concerned about the contents of the car; hobbyhorse heads poking out of the rear windows, Paddington Bears along the parcel shelf. We explained that we were toy makers on our way to a trade fair. Silly move!

Apparently you need “green forms” for this - odd how the colour sticks in my mind, nearly 40 years on. To obtain said forms required a visit to some office that was closed until Monday morning. It was now Friday evening; our fair opened on Saturday.

Say what you like about the Belgians, but there is, or was, a customs officer at Ostend in 1972 with a heart the size of a bucket. Seeing my tear-stained face, he took Eddie to one side and told him to keep the engine running, wait until the man on the gate went into the cabin for his cocoa, and then make a dash for it.

Our Audi made nought to 60 in less than a second in a haze of blue smoke. We belted off to Cologne.

When we got there the Germans couldn’t see the point of Paddington Bear.

“Vot exactly does he do, does he valk, talk, or beat a drum? Nein! Vell vot use is he?” So typical of the Germans - anything without a practical purpose is considered to be a waste of money. All the same, we had something to celebrate. We had just been granted the exclusive right to sell Paddingtons by Michael Bond, the author who created him in the much loved children’s books.

Our world had changed in only a few months. At Christmas 1971 I’d made our first Paddingtons as presents for our children, Jeremy and Joanna, copying the illustration in Michael’s books, which the children loved. Their friends had liked “Bear” so much that we had started manufacturing them for sale. Although we hadn’t called our bear Paddington, we’d had a letter from Michael Bond’s solicitor about breach of copyright. But, luckily, Michael thought him the finest bear he had ever seen, and we’d reached a licensing arrangement.

I don’t think any of us at that stage realised that this furry little character would become an international star selling in hundreds of thousands. Nor did we expect to be tripped up by jealousy, bureaucracy, trades unions and political correctness - or that we would be naive enough to entrust our business to what Michael calls “the kind of hail-fellow-well-met character who might buttonhole you in a pub . . .” As Michael puts it, our experience with Paddington Bear “could serve as an object lesson to anyone contemplating starting up a business on how not to go about it”.

WHEN Paddington came into our lives, Eddie and I were struggling to make ends meet. He was a salesman; I was a manufacturer of soft toys. Jeremy was 13; Joanna was 11. Life at Home Farm, our house in a village near Doncaster, was hectic.

It was about to get a good deal crazier. Sales of Paddington simply took off. In 1972 we sold 5,950 bears; in 1976 we sold 47,750. We were drowning, in the best possible sense. Orders were pouring in, almost without our trying.

To cope with this growth, we purchased a barn, a stable, a pigsty, the village post office and a cottage, all around Home Farm. We called it the Bear Garden.

We had a staff of about 10, a small office, four industrial sewing machines and an electric cutter with a vertical blade that was capable of slicing through 40 layers of felt, 12 layers of fur and as many fingers as you cared to insert.

Success took its toll on our personal lives. By 1975 Jeremy and Joanna were now at public schools, which meant we had to make long trips to collect them for exeats. The business was all-consuming, the time pressure was intense, and the obvious way to relieve it was to appoint a manageress.

There was only one contender for the job: Thelma, a bright, hard-working miner’s wife, an ex-head girl of the local grammar school. The other girls all loved and respected her.

We decided to break the news one Friday - fish and chip day - and opened a few bottles of champagne. I gathered everyone together and said what a pleasure it was to for me to announce a new manageress - Thelma!

Their reaction still makes me shudder. Insults flew, tempers flared, and plonkers - the bits of wood used to stuff the bears - were hurled to the ground. Eddie and I stared at each other. We thought that if you gave your staff chips and wine on a Friday, allowed them flexitime to fit in with their children’s holidays and husbands’ shifts, paid them a decent wage and treated them the way you’d like to be treated ourselves, you’d have a happy workforce.

Anyway, Thelma would later turn into a megalomaniac, hating me with a passion. She considered the factory her domain so, if I arrived with the plans for my latest design to be put into production, I usually received a sharp “Bugger off!”. I could stand this to a point; but one morning, probably with a severe dose of PMT, I flipped and told her to be quiet. Off she went across the fields, and we never saw her again.

Recruiting new girls was easy. One who slipped through the net was Sharon, a militant trade unionist who came armed with a stopwatch, a thermometer and a pile of health and safety rulebooks. If the temperature in the factory rose by one degree, she demanded cold drinks all round, and a walk round the cherry tree. If it fell by one degree, it was too cold to work and everyone had to go home. If her machine needed moving six inches, a man had to be employed to move it.

After a 13 weeks “sick leave”, she announced that she was now the new union leader. In future, she said, all work policies in the factory would be dictated by her.

The local secretary of the TGWU, a weasel-faced ginger-top who I will call Mr G, rang to say he wanted to talk to the girls. We invited him first to visit us for a cup of tea at Home Farm. Before his arrival, Jeremy hid a tape-recorder under Eddie’s chair.

Mr G, the evil little toad, had learnt from our MP that we had made a planning application for larger premises. He implied that if we refused to become unionised, he would make it difficult for us to get planning permission.

Eddie leant back to press the record button, but he pressed rewind instead. Unmistakable reverse-tape noises could be heard coming from the chair but our fat little friend didn’t seem to notice. He demanded to talk to all the girls on the factory site.

A few days later, we all assembled for one of the most humiliating experiences of our lives. Mr G publicly revealed our salaries, and denigrated us as people and bosses. Today, being more experienced at dealing with horrid people, I would no doubt have thumped him.

Eddie then played his joker. He reminded Mr G of his threat to scupper planning permission for the factory. A hush went round the room. The girls may have been susceptible to his claims that they were being exploited but the last thing any of them wanted was to see the business close and their jobs lost. All eyes turned on Mr G.

Silence. Eddie then reminded him of the whirring noise under his chair. Mr G looked perplexed. “That was a tape recorder recording your threat,” he lied.

Mr G went the colour of beetroot. He shoved his papers into his brief-case and fled. Nothing more was heard of him. Apparently our planning application went all the way to the House of Lords - and was still turned down. But the minister, Peter Shore, then stepped in and permitted it on the grounds that we were contributing to the export drive.

Sales continued at a fantastic pace. The mid to late Seventies were our golden years. We averaged about 5,000 bears per month in 1978. Our all-time production record was 11,500 that November.

However, 1978 also proved to be a turning point, when things started to go wrong. We made the mistake of thinking we needed an office manager to be free of the everyday pressures involved in running a factory. We thought we had found the ideal candidate in a lovely man called Bill, whom I’d acted with in the local thespians years ago. He had made a superb Jack Point in The Yeomen of the Guard, but this is not necessarily the right basis for an office manager.

Immaculately dressed, Bill kept the office spotless and bought lots of pretty ringbinders, notebooks and files. But he was useless. Instead of taking pressure off Eddie and me, he merely added to it. Betty, our bookkeeper, was miffed at Bill’s dusting (don’t ask) and handed in her notice. Eddie was laid up in bed suffering from a bad back. Jeremy was wreaking havoc at Repton, his school; and Joanna was home with her third bout of ME, sitting in a chair staring into space, hardly having the energy to breathe. (Don’t ever let anyone tell you that ME is all in the mind. It’s real, it’s debilitating and it’s frightening.) To top it all, the factory inspector was threatening to close us down because the magnetic catches on our stuffing machine didn’t conform to health and safety specifications.

Bill gave way to Graham. If there was one thing Eddie couldn’t abide, it was a man with a beard. He also strongly disapproved of obesity, and he hated plastic shoes and weak handshakes. Graham weighed around 24 stone, had a naval beard, his orange shoes were reconstituted vinyl, and his handshake reminded you of a haddock. Yet, with his phenomenal self-belief, he convinced us he was the person we were looking for.

He impressed us with his knowledge of Paddington, even to the point of having read up on the origins of the duffel coat. He skilfully mentioned his time at Southampton University (later revealed to have been a three-week computer course). We were captivated.

His one stipulation was that Eddie and I kept our distance. He wanted complete control, he said. We had to trust him to do the job without interference. Fair enough, we thought. A dynamic individual like Graham needs freedom in which to exercise his talents. Wrong.

His employment ended after a chat with me while we were both bored at a trade fair. He had exhausted the itchiness between his toes and which remedy was best for his flatulence, so I steered the conversation towards business. How were the orders for Beanies (mini-Paddingtons) coming along? He said we had 1,000 orders on the books, and that he had placed an order for the fur with which to make them.

“Seven bears to the metre, isn’t it?” I inquired, knowing bloody well it was.

“Correct,” said Graham, “so I’ve ordered 7,000 metres of fur.”

Now, maths has never been my strong point, but I was fairly sure that he should have divided 1,000 by 7, not multiplied by 7. Graham argued the point for some time, but slowly the face around his beard turned beige.

“Just off to the toilet,” he said and headed swiftly in the direction of the telephones.

I made an unscheduled visit to the warehouse. The piles upon piles of fur in there were breathtaking. I discovered that we had another £75,000 worth on order. Further inquiries revealed that Graham left the factory every afternoon at 4.59pm and that, if you didn’t let him down the stairs first, you were in danger of being flattened.

There were minor discrepancies in the petty cash too, but these were relatively unimportant compared with the major blunders. I’m afraid I lost it when I confronted him.

“Keys on desk! Fat arse downstairs!”

I remember resisting the urge to kill, purely because I had just been appointed a magistrate and enjoyed it too much.

About 10 years later I had a call from a friend who was secretary of the local branch of the Conservative party inquiring if I knew of a certain Mr Graham Pugh. Apparently, as treasurer of the club, he had milked the fruit machine of £5,000 for four consecutive years. In his last year, he was too greedy and took £10,000, which was spotted.

Having recently learnt of Graham’s death, I have to say that I know he was a rogue but a very clever rogue, and you couldn’t really blame him. We were stupid to employ him in the first place without taking up references. We never made the sort of checks that any sane bosses would have done.

Another problem was piracy. Counterfeit producers small and large obviously noticed our success and thought they’d like to share in it. Going to London one day, Eddie was telling my father about an argument he had had with a small shopkeeper in Doncaster who refused to withdraw a pirate Paddington from her window. On arriving at King’s Cross, he stepped off the train and received an enormous right hook on the jaw. The shopkeeper’s husband had been sitting behind us, and had heard every word.

Finally, Eddie reached boiling point with one unscrupulous trader from Southend-on-Sea. He had produced large numbers of a bear that wore the usual tatty duffel coat, plastic wellies, and a felt porkpie hat with a red, white and blue ribbon round it. It was called “Wellington”.

He had ignored all warning letters, so we took him all the way to the High Court in London. The newspapers next morning all carried banner headlines proclaiming “Victory for a little bear!”.

On the home front, Jeremy’s headmaster at Repton, a patient gentleman, finally had enough of his antics, and politely suggested that he return home, and revisit the school only to sit his A-levels. Jeremy had been threatened with expulsion before - something to do with an explosion in the science block - but had told the headmaster on that occasion that the shock would prove fatal for his father, who “had a weak heart”. His silver tongue bought him time, even if what he said was nonsense: Eddie had health problems galore, but his heart was never one of them.

WHATEVER people tell you about the downside of success, it is wonderfully satisfying when it happens, particularly if you’ve worked hard for it. Eddie and I certainly enjoyed ourselves, and there were benefits for our children too. Jeremy’s sex life was transformed: he could get a dance/snog with a girl just by promising her a PB.

The Paddington phenomenon was at its height, with branded products of all types coming out. As well as our bears, there was a range of stationery, sheets and bedding, and ceramic giftware. Two Paddington and Friends retail shops opened in London and Bath, and a Paddington TV show was broadcast on BBC1.

Hamleys posted a large notice by its door saying “Paddington Bear on the fourth floor”, and one year Paddington was even voted Toy of the Year. Princess Anne was photographed coming out of hospital after the birth of Zara with the sister holding a Paddington Bear that had been presented to her. Torvill and Dean used PB as their mascot. He often featured on the conveyor belt in The Generation Game, provoking those moronic shrieks of “cuddly toy!”, and Twiggy posed with him.

But we needed to diversify. I suppose, looking back, we were beginning to panic. Sales of Paddington had dropped alarmingly to about 600 a month in 1982, compared with 6,000 a month in 1978.

And so we created Golly, whose introduction caused us enormous grief. People were always telling me how, as children, they had loved their “golliwog”, as they were called then. Ignoring the storm of protest that had blown up over Robertson’s jam mascot we launched a superb Golly. Nothing but the best as usual - he had the most expensive fur hair, probably mink, and a coat of the very best red felt, a large spotted bow tie and a bro-derie anglaise frilly shirt. He really was magnificent, and was proving to be a winner, when the inevitable happened.

A muesli-shoed do-gooder from Islington saw one in a shop window and alerted the media. As we sat watching TV one evening, the six o’clock news started with a close-up of Golly. When Big Ben stopped bonging, the newsreader, in censorious tones, announced the grim news: a racially offensive toy was being sold in a gift shop in London! Mr Beardie was then interviewed, clutching Golly by the throat, and proceeded to threaten fire and frogs on the manufacturer who had come up with such a vile and offensive product.

I have taken quite a lot of criticism in my time about my designs, but had never before had them described as vile. I’m not sure now whether or not bricks were thrown at the shop, but I do remember the retailer ringing us the next day to place a big order for more, as he had been inundated with requests. People from all over the country were delighted to have, at last, found their beloved Golly. We were, of course, ordered to stop making them. I don’t know who gave the order, presumably the Golly enforcement department, but we completely ignored it.

One project that was never going to sell but which brought us enormous pleasure (and the inevitable threats of legal action) was the creation of an elephant for the Manchester fire service.

The city council had given its fire service what I think is known as a corporate identity. The symbol it chose was “Welephant” - a bright red elephant, wearing a yellow fireman’s helmet, black boots and a belt supporting his axe. This mascot was then adopted nationally, two life-size Welephant costumes were made for promotional purposes, and some poor sod who drew the short straw would parade up and down the high streets of major cities with a bucket, collecting funds for underpaid, and undervalued, firemen. Our company, Gabrielle Designs, was invited to create a gift Welephant wearing the same outfit.

Jeremy was our salesman in the south by this time, covering the country from the Wash down. He mainly visited shops before 4pm, and planned his route carefully to finish within easy reach of that evening’s party in Fulham. Boutiques in Penzance had to open their doors to him before 9am or never get a visit. He went down a bomb with most customers, but the odd few, those without a sense of humour, did ring us with complaints. His petrol expenses were ludicrously high, and he wore out tyres at a horrific rate, but he was happy. I think.

One of the things that made him unhappy was working weekends, but one Saturday Eddie put his foot down and insisted that he was to meet a very important buyer from overseas. The rendezvous was in a hotel foyer in Oxford Street, and Jeremy’s brief was to show her samples of Paddington, etc and get an order if he could.

They met at the appointed hour and everything went smoothly until Welephant was produced from the bag. The buyer was exceptionally unimpressed, and asked who in God’s name he was. Jeremy feigned incredulity; how could anyone not have heard of the famous red elephant! “They are everywhere!” he said.

Our son is renowned for his good fortune, but this stroke of luck takes the biscuit: at that very moment in Oxford Street, the poor man in the Welephant suit that morning was desperate for the loo, so nipped into the hotel in search of the bathroom.

“You see,” said Jeremy, as Welephant walked through the foyer, “here comes one now.”

Still on the subject of dead ducks - not Jeremy - our next venture was Bothy. It was the year when the indomitable Sir Ranulph Fiennes had just completed his trek across the Antarctic. He had arrived home seriously short of funds, and his dear wife at that time, Lady Virginia, asked if we could help. She had a little jack russell called Bothy, who had accompanied her to the base station from where she gave Sir Ranulph support. They were childless, and this dog obviously meant a great deal to both of them.

Jeremy was dispatched to open discussions before I met with the pair to finalise a design. Sir Ranulph and Lady Virginia knew exactly how they wanted the finished product to look, but had not taken into account practical details such as where to buy jack russell fur. Bothy was to wear a smart navy blue jacket, upon which was sewn a Union Jack, and the Transglobe logo.

We took the commission on, against our better judgment. Bothy was incredibly difficult to make, to stuff, and to sell. I think we sold about 11, one of them to Prince Charles, who didn’t strictly buy one. He was attending the premiere of the film made of the expedition, where Jeremy was manning a stall with his girlfriend at the time, who turned up in a see-through dress. I think this is probably what brought the prince over to the stall, but he was, as usual, terribly polite, and went off with a Bothy under his arm. The agreement was that the expedition fund would receive 10% of our profits. Which came to precisely nil.

A design of which I was really proud, and which enjoyed moderate success though it brought with it the usual amount of grief, was Henry. We launched it around the time of Hooray Henrys and Sloane Rangers.

Henry had a Viyella check shirt, an old school tie, a flat tweed cap, a Bar-bour and green wellies. For once, we had a nonPaddington product that sold well: the SW6 crowd had plenty of money in the Eighties, and Henry was the perfect gift for either sex.

There was, of course, a fly in the ointment, in the shape of a well known designer who owned a shop in the Hooray heartland of Walton Street, near Harrods. If I remember rightly, she actually bought a quantity of our Henries to sell in her shop, but then, out of the blue, contacted us to say that she had invented the concept of the Sloane Ranger bear, that she had had the idea of making them for sale, and that we had infringed her copyright.

This was pure nonsense. Any fool knows that there is no copyright in an idea. It’s the person who gets off their backside and does something about it that gets the rights. So bugger off, madam. Solicitors were involved as usual, and a few tempers were lost. I never go down Walton Street today without a little finger gesture.

© Shirley Clarkson 2008

Extracted from Bearly Believable: My Part in the Paddington Bear Story by Shirley Clarkson, to be published by Harriman House on June 23 at £16.99. Copies can be ordered for £15.29, including postage, from The Sunday Times BooksFirst on on 0870 165 8585

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