Thoughts on Wilhemina Biliams

(This post is dated Saturday, 17 October 2009)

I've been thinking a bit more about how the old Granny woman should act and what she should look like, and I have come to realize that was is needed is a written profile of the old biddy. So I shall take this opportunity to throw all my thoughts on to this post for your enjoyment.

Information Given To Us In The Character Brief
Name: Wilhemina Biliams
“Willie and Pocahontas’s grandmother, she thinks everything smells bad and is worried that a chimp or one of those nasty bonobos might escape and “Poo in her hat.””

My Adaptation Of The Character (Liable to change)
Name: Wilhemina "Minnie" Biliams
Age: 70
Occupation: Being elderly, babysitting grandchildren
Personality: Bad-tempered, crotchety, impulsive, daring, "mutton-dressed-as-lamb", vain

Bio: Minnie is an elderly lady who spends her retirement taking her hyperactive grandchildren on outings when she could be sitting in her cosy armchair watching "The Jeremy Kyle Show" and "Pimp My Ride". She gets very irritable when she has to look after children. She secretly wishes she was young again, and so spends most of her life complaining about the youth. She is very frail and is incapable of walking around for extended periods of time without moaning about her weak ankles. Minnie is easily distinguished by her hat, which she never ever takes off.


(An additional possibility...)
Minnie's daughter and her husband (Willie and Pocahontas' parents) bought Minnie a mobility buggy/zimmerframe/walkingstick-umbrella for her 70th Birthday. She is very proud of it, and ensures that she terrorizes the general public when out and about with her new "weapon".

I'm worried that including a buggy would be too much to add to the overall design of the character, so I'm a little sceptical about this idea atm. However, I like the idea of Minnie's character being weak physically, but her stubborn determination and bitterness of being old gets her through life. I think that it would be quite funny if she was a rebellious teenager trapped in an old woman's body. The buggy would be a way of her getting freedom from her boring pensioner's life. She would be rather dangerous when driving the buggy around aswell. It would be her way of getting back at people who think that she is old and crusty haha!

I dunno, this is still the early development, but I'm quite happy with the path this project is going down.

Hopefully Tom will be able to get some thoughts about his character Wee Eck McGlone up on here too, and then we can decide if these characters would bond well together. We were saying that there is certainly potential for love interest with these two characters, so it is very important that these lovebirds compliment and contrast eachother well.