{"id":405361,"date":"2026-04-30T17:49:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-30T17:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/405361\/"},"modified":"2026-04-30T17:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-30T17:49:07","slug":"southampton-paddington-bear-statue-returns-after-vandalism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/405361\/","title":{"rendered":"Southampton Paddington Bear statue returns after vandalism"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The local branch of bank BB Merchants funded the bench repairs, while its planters were given a fresh lease of life by Southampton business, The Garden Society.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">BB Merchants&#8217; Neil Fillbrook said the company wanted to &#8220;offer tangible help&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;As Paddington would say: &#8216;If you&#8217;re kind and polite, the world will be right.&#8217;  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;m with the righteous bear on this and it&#8217;s such an important message that resonates today more so than ever before,&#8221; he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Police are continuing to investigate the vandalism and are reviewing CCTV footage.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Go!Southampton &#8211; the Business Improvement District organisation for the city centre &#8211; is responsible for the 3ft 6in statue and had been looking after him in its offices while the bench was restored.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Paddington statue originally arrived in Southampton in 2024 as part of the UK-wide trail celebrating the release of the film Paddington in Peru.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It was originally placed outside Westquay shopping centre but later moved to Guildhall Square.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The local branch of bank BB Merchants funded the bench repairs, while its planters were given a fresh&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":405362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-405361","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=405361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/405361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/405362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=405361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=405361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=405361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}