Plastic fantastic

Not all heroes wear capes, some are more likely to put on the wrong trousers and ask their dog if he wants 'more cheese'. Harry Pearson meets Wallace and Gromit, two of our best-loved Plasticine characters

- Harry Pearson

THE late, great humourist Miles Kington had a list of things in Britain no one ever says a bad word about-steam engines, Morecambe and Wise, the Settle-Carlisle Railway among them. Were he around today, Kington would surely have added the names Wallace and Gromit to his list. The hapless Plasticine heroes are so universal it surprised nobody when The Queen told schoolchildren that the cheese-fixated duo are her husband's 'favourite people in the world'.

'Wallace and Gromit have been around all my life, they give everyone a lovely warm, nostalgic feeling,' enthuses Emma StirlingMiddleton, the curator of an exhibition at the Cartoon Museum, London W1, devoted to the dynamic duo's second screen outing, The Wrong Trousers. Regarded by critics as one of the pinnacles of British cinema, the film is celebrating its 30th birthday. A huge slice of Wensleydale is surely in order.

'We have original sketches, scripts, the equipment used to make the film, sets, equipment, props, the whole spectrum,' Ms Stirling-Middleton adds. 'We even have the Oscar the film won in 1994.' And, of course, there are the stars of the show: Wallace, Gromit and their would-be nemesis, Feathers McGraw, a sinister penguin jewel-thief, who disguises himself as a hen by wearing a rubber glove as a hat. 'I love penguins,' creator Nick Park explains, but I wanted to cast one against type. A penguin is a very unlikely villain.'

That Feathers McGraw is widely acknowledged to be one of the most evil baddies in cinematic history is largely down to the work of Steve Box, the only animator apart from Mr Park who worked on the 30-minute epic.

Drawing on influences such as Mrs Danvers from Alfred Hitchcock's 1940 screen adaptation of Rebecca, Mr Box created a figure that's menacing, silent and achieves a lot despite doing very little.