Stephen Fry invests in talking teddy bear

A Welsh entrepreneur is desperate to recruit Stephen Fry as the voice of his talking teddy bear after the actor/funnyman pledged financial support to the fledgling project. Ashley Conlan asked Fry to back his SuperToy invention and the Gosford Park star was happy to oblige, handing over $7,500 (£5,000) via crowd-sourcing site Kickstarter.com.
On Monday (29Jul13), the Brit also tweeted a link to the fundraising page, writing, “As an arctophile (teddy bear fanatic) I couldn’t resist backing this,” and Conlan admits the donations have come pouring in since Fry’s mention.
The inventor tells Britain’s Daily Telegraph he wants to persuade Fry to be the voice of his teddy, which uses artificial intelligence and thousands of pre-programmed answers to “converse” with kids.
Conlan says, “It’s gone ballistic since the tweet. I started out with the idea three years ago, from the kitchen table. Now I’m hoping we can get into production and have this in children’s hands by Christmas. I wrote to Stephen last week and he loves it, he absolutely adores it. You see what he wrote. It’s incredible.”