Billy Bunter

William George Bunter
Billy Bunter as depicted by The Magnet artist C. H. Chapman
First appearance	The Magnet #1 "The Making of Harry Wharton" (1908)
Last appearance	Bunter's Last Fling (1965)
Created by	Charles Hamilton writing as Frank Richards
Portrayed by	Gerald Campion (BBC TV series 1952–1961
Information
Nickname(s)	Billy; "The Owl of the Remove"
Gender	Male
Occupation	Schoolboy
Relatives	Bessie Bunter (sister); Sammy Bunter (brother); Mr. Samuel Bunter (father); Mrs Amelia Bunter (mother)
Nationality	British

William George Bunter (known as Billy Bunter) is a fictional schoolboy created by Charles Hamilton using the pen name Frank Richards. He features in stories set at Greyfriars School, originally published in the boys' weekly story paper The Magnet from 1908 to 1940. Subsequently, Bunter has appeared in novels, on television, in stage plays, and in comic strips.

He is in the Lower Fourth form of Greyfriars School, known as the Remove, whose members are 14–15 years of age. Originally a minor character, his role was expanded over the years with his antics being heavily used in the stories to provide comic relief and to drive forward the plots.

Bunter's defining characteristic is his greediness and dramatically overweight appearance. His character is, in many respects, a highly obnoxious anti-hero. As well as his gluttony, he is also obtuse, lazy, racist, inquisitive, deceitful, slothful, self-important and conceited. These defects, however, are not recognized by Bunter. In his own mind, he is an exemplary character: handsome, talented and aristocratic; and dismisses most of those around him as "beasts". Even so, the negative sides of Bunter are offset by several genuine redeeming features; such as his tendency, from time to time, to display courage in aid of others; his ability to be generous, on the rare occasions when he has food or cash; and above all his very real love and concern for his mother. All these, combined with Bunter's cheery optimism, his comically transparent untruthfulness and inept attempts to conceal his antics from his schoolmasters and schoolfellows, combine to make a character that succeeds in being highly entertaining but which rarely attracts the reader's lasting sympathy.

Charles Hamilton invented the character for an unpublished story in the late 1890s. He claimed Bunter was derived from three persons: a corpulent editor, a short-sighted relative, and another relative who was perpetually trying to raise a loan.

The identity of the fat editor is unclear: various sources suggest either Lewis Ross Higgins, editor of a number of comic papers and who is described as resembling the author G. K. Chesterton; or Percy Griffith, the original editor of The Magnet. The short sighted relative was Hamilton's younger sister Una, who had suffered poor sight since childhood, and who had been wont to peer at him somewhat like an Owl; while the other relative was his older brother Alex, who was described as "generally anxious to borrow a pound or two" on the strength of the anticipated arrival of a cheque that never materialized.