Happy Birthday Knut!
By Spirit FingersThere was no purloining of expensive designer coats but nonetheless the celebrations were as splashy as only a celebrity can do:
The world-famous polar bear Knut turned one on Wednesday and polished off a giant fish cake at a birthday party in Berlin Zoo that was broadcast live on German television in a testimony to his star status.
Hundreds of children gathered at the zoo, some with birthday cards for the bear that became a tourist magnet after he was rejected by his mother and rescued from her cage by a keeper a year ago.
And from this telling passage, we are also able to draw some arresting parallels between two past-their-prime celebrities whose birthdays fall in the same week:
But the rush to see the bear slowed as he began to put on weight and lost his cute looks. Knut now weighs a hefty 115 kilogrammes (253 pounds) and is no longer snow white.
As school children serenaded him on Wednesday, N-TV television news channel remarked that the crowds of visitors for his birthday were now an exception, reminiscent of the old days.
