Name: Newt Scamander.
Age: 117, assuming he is still alive.
Appearance: Magical.
Newt? What kind of a name is that? It's short for Newton … Newton Artemis Fido Scamander …
Fido? I haven't finished … Order of Merlin, second class. He's a "magizoologist", or expert on magical animals.
That's an actual profession? Sort of. He comes from the same fictional universe as Harry Potter.
Is he equally whimsical and annoying? Judge for yourself. According to the Harry Potter Wiki, which knows about such things, Newt "was born in 1897, and developed an interest in magical creatures at an early age as his mother was a breeder of hippogriffs. As a seven-year-old, Scamander would regularly dismember Horklumps in his bedroom … By the beginning of the 1990s, he was retired and living in Dorset with his wife and their three pet Kneazles, Hoppy, Milly and Mauler."
Please, no more twee twaddle. He originally cropped up in the first Potter story, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, as the author of one of Harry's textbooks, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. Back in the real world, Rowling later wrote a book of the same name in aid of Comic Relief, with Scamander credited as the author.
What did I say about twee twaddle? Sorry. Newt is now headed for the big screen in three new movies, the first of them named after his seminal work. The stories "will start in New York about seven decades before the arrival of Mr Potter and his pals", according to this weekend's New York Times.
Huge news for Potter fans! Yes and no. This was all announced six months ago, but most of the Muggles in the media only seem to have noticed it now, after the head of Warner Bros mentioned it again.
Do we know anything else about it? Rowling will write the screenplay for the first film, no director has been named, and there isn't even a date for the start of shooting. And as for Newt himself …
Yes? Suggestions include Matt "Doctor Who" Smith, Harry "One Direction" Styles and an "actual newt".
In other words, no one's got a clue? Precisely.
Do say: "Another load of wizards!"
Don't say: "Another load of warlocks!"
