There are endless stories from the 1970s and 80s that shock and amaze us today. Because, as we all know, things were a bit different back then.

But, surely, the menage-a-trois (of sorts) between Maggie and Andy Robin, a couple from Clackmannanshire, Scotland, and Hercules, the 9ft, 65st grizzly bear who lived with them for 25 years, ate fry-ups for breakfast at the kitchen table, lounged in front of the fire, and drank buckets of beer with punters in the pub they ran, takes the biscuit.

'It was a love story between the three of us, a definite love story,' says Maggie, now 76. 

'No one's lived like that with a bear before. He was our wee boy.'

A wee boy who, as anyone over 50 will remember, went missing in the Outer Hebrides during a restorative swim in a loch after filming a loo paper advert for Kleenex in 1980.

His disappearance sparked a desperate 24-day bear hunt involving the police, Army, and locals in helicopters, boats, light aircraft and on foot with nets and tranquilliser guns.

And his eventual recovery turned him into a superstar who met Margaret Thatcher, appeared with Roger Moore in Octopussy and made his mark on the chat show circuit not just here with Russell Harty and Bruce Forsyth, but in America, Australia, Japan and Italy.

'It was a love story between the three of us, a definite love story,' says Maggie, now 76. She is pictured here in the late 70s with Hercules

Scottish ex professional wrestler Andy Robin had fallen in love with the idea of owning a bear after being asked to wrestle on in Canada; the couple raised Hercules, who grew to 8ft and 65stone, like a child, with one friend describing their relationship as a 'love triangle'  

Now, a quarter of a century after his death, an extraordinary and moving documentary, Hercules The Bear: A Love Story, which airs tomorrow on BBC2, tells how Andy and Maggie - who did not have children - raised him from a six-month-old cub, as their son.

So we learn how Maggie would hug, chat to him - 'I was mum, I got all the cuddles' - and cook for him endlessly. 

Eggs, beans, burgers, spaghetti bolognese, M&S prawns, coffee with condensed milk, cola, birthday cakes complete with candles which he'd blow out before wolfing the lot. 

'I cooked and cooked. He was a fussy eater and didn't really like uncooked food,' she says.

Though he was partial to a pint of shandy and the odd Babycham in the pub.

'We had to be careful with Babycham. He got a wee bit tipsy a couple of times, he was like a big stumbly fur coat - so we didn't encourage that,' she says firmly.

We also hear how Andy, a champion wrestler and lumberjack, who died in 2019 aged 86, would run over the moors with his furry 'boy', swim with him in lakes and rivers (and later his own swimming pool), and play-wrestle with him for hours, despite the sharp claws and ever-expanding bulk.