Over the last three decades, Filbert has appeared on matchdays at Filbert Street and King Power Stadium - over 1,000 matches - loyally cheering the Foxes on from the sidelines and entertaining the crowd.
On 19 September, 1992, Filbert Fox made his first-ever appearance as the Club’s new mascot. He was introduced to the Filbert Street crowd in the First Division (now Championship) game against Brentford, when he appeared on the pitch with Alan ‘The Birch’ Birchenall and Gary Lineker, who were presenting a cheque for £5,000 to the winner of the Club’s lottery. Filbert was one of the first modern football mascots.
He followed a tradition of earlier Leicester mascots which included boys in schoolcaps with labels hung around their neck naming a favourite player in the 1920s and a gentleman who wore a long white coat and a blue and white top hat carrying a blue and white walking stick.
The tradition of using schoolboys as mascots, dressed in homemade Leicester City kits, continued after the Second World War. A schoolboy mascot was at the 1949 FA Cup Semi-Final. Another, named James Burfoot, was the official mascot in the 1950s.
He also wore a homemade kit and rang a miner’s bell which had been painted blue and white.
From 1992, Filbert spent his first season resplendent in the Club’s new all-blue strip, which sported the Club’s new crest, a fox head on a white cinquefoil. This had replaced the running fox crest. The new badge was introduced in Filbert’s first season and was the basis of the present-day crest.
Over the next 30 years, Filbert has been a constant presence on matchdays, cheering on the team from the sidelines and entertaining the crowd with his antics. In the late 1990s, he was accompanied by Vicky Vixen and Cousin Dennis.
He has outlasted 19 managers and hundreds of players. He has made numerous visits to schools and to a whole variety of organisations around the city and county. He has also visited the United States of America, Sweden, India, Belgium, Hong Kong, Denmark, Spain, Thailand and Singapore representing the Club. Thirty years after his introduction to the people of Leicester, he is still going from strength to strength.