Here is Winnie the Pooh, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Walt Disney. As a bear of very little brain, he is possibly not yet aware that Disney has paid a cool £240m for the right to exploit him, along with his friends Piglet, Rabbit, Eeyore and Owl, for the next 25 years. The money will go to various causes, chiefly the Royal Literary Fund, which stands to make £90m, and the Garrick Club and Westminster School, each of which will land £60m. In his role as A Wise Old Owl, the former chancellor, Lord Lamont, urged that the Garrick's loot should be split equally between its members, including him. He was outvoted.

Disney's coup is not, however, an outcome which satisfies the Sun, which calls it a lost opportunity. Because of the short-sighted attitude of the late Christopher Robin Milne and his family, it complains, a huge commercial opportunity has been lost to Pooh's native land. "We calculate," it moans, "that the US taxman will earn $1.5bn dollars this year alone from Disney's Pooh profits. Schools will be built in America. Roads will be built in America. National debt will be paid down in America. The Milnes have sold to a gigantic media conglomerate. Did it ever occur to them that they could have been running their own?"

Probably not. The real life Christopher Robin seems to have been a gentle, reflective figure, unthrilled by the prospect of a Very Deep Pit full of money. Gigantic media conglomerates were hardly his kind of heffalump. Yet the Sun's complaining tones might have seemed endearingly familiar to him. "The Old Grey Donkey, Eeyore, stood by himself in a thistly corner of the Forest, his front feet well apart, his head on one side, and thought about things. Sometimes he thought sadly to himself, 'Why?' and sometimes he thought 'Wherefore?' and sometimes he thought 'Inasmuch as which?' . . ." Good to know that his spirit lives on in a thistly corner of Wapping.