Links With The Past: Mascot’s Top Hat & Walking Stick

Just over 28 years ago, 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 Sky Bet 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 too. Photographs in the Club’s archives indicate that these included young boy in a school cap with a label hung around his neck naming a favourite player and a young lad bedecked in Leicester City colours ringing a blue and white handbell.

There are also two photographs in the archives dating from the 1940s in which the mascot is a gentleman in a white coat. He is wearing a blue and white top hat and carrying a blue and white walking stick.

In one photograph, he is on a railway platform with the players about to travel from Leicester to Chelsea for the Club’s first FA Cup tie after the Second World War in January 1946. He also appears in a second photograph taken before the epic 18-goal FA Cup tie victory over Birmingham City on the way to the 1949 FA Cup Final.

The hat and walking stick, pictured above, are now on display in the reception area at King Power Stadium.