Press Release of the Day: Downton Abbey’s Mrs. Patmore Visits Chinese Moon Bears


And the winner for today’s greatest press release:

English actress Lesley Nicol, star of international hit TV show Downton Abbey, has completed a visit to Animals Asia’s China Bear Rescue Centre (CBRC) in Chengdu, China.

Nicol—who plays the “highly-strung and quick-tempered” cook Mrs. Patmore—has previously tweeted her love for the Chinese bears:

bears china downton abbey patmore

Animals Asia, headquartered in Hong Kong, is an organization dedicated to protecting “moon bears” in China; here’s an example of moon-bear abuse.

Lesley Nicol isn’t even the first actor in the acclaimed British period drama to go rescue tortured bears in China. That honor belongs to Peter Egan, who earlier this year traveled to Chengdu, a city in southwest China, to work with Animals Asia. Egan played the Duke of Argyll in a Downton Abbey Christmas special.

On a related note, there was that one episode of Downton Abbey in which under-butler Thomas Barrow teaches kitchen maid Daisy Mason an old dance move called “the Grizzly Bear“; Mrs. Patmore shows up in that scene near the end.

So now you know.

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WE'LL BE BLUNT.

We have a considerable $390,000 gap in our online fundraising budget that we have to close by June 30. There is no wiggle room, we've already cut everything we can, and we urgently need more readers to pitch in—especially from this specific blurb you're reading right now.

We'll also be quite transparent and level-headed with you about this.

In "News Never Pays," our fearless CEO, Monika Bauerlein, connects the dots on several concerning media trends that, taken together, expose the fallacy behind the tragic state of journalism right now: That the marketplace will take care of providing the free and independent press citizens in a democracy need, and the Next New Thing to invest millions in will fix the problem. Bottom line: Journalism that serves the people needs the support of the people. That's the Next New Thing.

And it's what MoJo and our community of readers have been doing for 47 years now.

But staying afloat is harder than ever.

In "This Is Not a Crisis. It's The New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, why this moment is particularly urgent, and how we can best communicate that without screaming OMG PLEASE HELP over and over. We also touch on our history and how our nonprofit model makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there: Letting us go deep, focus on underreported beats, and bring unique perspectives to the day's news.

You're here for reporting like that, not fundraising, but one cannot exist without the other, and it's vitally important that we hit our intimidating $390,000 number in online donations by June 30.

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