A new BBC documentary reveals the extraordinary story of how a Scottish couple raised a bear cub like a son – and then turned him into a Hollywood movie star.
Hercules the Bear: A Love Story, airing on BBC Two on December 30th, recounts 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, went on to raise the brown bear, who they named Hercules, and share their lives with him for a quarter of a century until the animal’s death at the age of 26 in February 2000.
An emotional Maggie Robin tells the programme: ‘It was a love story. Between the three of us, it was a definite love story. Nobody’s ever lived like that with a bear before and never will probably.’
Other friends who knew the couple, say the unconventional family dynamic was the perfect ‘love triangle’, saying ‘they were made for each other’.
Maggie describes how Andy, who had originally trained as a lumberjack and was 16 years her senior, had become fixated with owning a grizzly after he had been challenged to fight one, named Terrible Ted, at a $1,000 bout in Ontario.
While picking up a bear like a pet certainly wouldn’t happen now, the couple took ownership of the tiny nine-month-old cub after striking a deal with Eddie Orbell, the manager of Highland Wildlife Park…and brought him home.
What followed was a childhood of sorts, with the patient couple training the goliath ‘with big teeth’ not to hurt people – despite him standing at 8ft tall and weighing nearly 65 stone when he was fully grown.
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.
Hercules the grizzly bear came into the lives of Maggie and Andy Robin in 1975 when the couple bought him as a tiny cub for just £50 from a Scottish wildlife park (Pictured: Maggie Robin in the late 70s with Hercules)
Scottish ex professional wrestler Andy Robin had fallen in love with the idea of owning a bear after being asked to wrestle on in Canada; the couple raised Hercules, who grew to 8ft and 65stone, like a child, with one friend describing their relationship as a ‘love triangle’
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 follows Andy’s death from cancer in December 2019 aged 84 and sees 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.
In Hercules the Bear: A Love Story, which airs on BBC Two on New Year’s Eve, Maggie Robin describes the bond her husband had with the gentle giant, calling it ‘magic’
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 explores 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 grizzly, who was partial to M&S prawns and bottles of sparkling perry, found fame in a series of TV and film roles, including opposite Roger Moore in Octopussy in 1983)
The bear almost came a cropper while filming an advert for Kleenex in the Outer Hebrides in 1980 when he went missing on the Scottish island for 24 days
Going on a bearhunt: The story of missing Hercules gripped the country; he was eventually rescued, 15 stone lighter, just over three weeks later
The couple’s marriage proved tumultuous at times, with the bear putting a strain on their relationship…because, Robin says, 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.
The statue at Langass Woods, on the Scottish island of North Uist in the Outer Hebrides, where Hercules is now buried. Andy Robin, who died aged 84 in 2019, was laid to rest by his side
Speaking about the logistics of moving Hercules, the Robins said at the time: ‘He was still a big, heavy bear. It was quite a challenge.’
The death of the grizzly put an enormous strain on the couple’s relations, with Andy ‘lost’ without the bear he had raised.
Maggie explained to the Daily Mail how it affected her late husband, saying: ‘It was awful. Andy was just lost. His focus for life, his everything, had just been whipped away from him.
‘For the first two years I didn’t know if we’d make it. I thought: “Are we going to last?” Andy just shut himself away. He wouldn’t talk about how he was feeling.’
The Scot tells the BBC Two documentary that her late husband also made it clear where he wanted to be laid to rest after his own death, saying: ‘I need to be beside my big fella’, with his wife adding: ‘It’s just where he had to be’.
Hercules the Bear: A Love Story is on iPlayer and BBC Two at 6pm on 30 December