Bert

Bert is a muppet character on PBS' long-running children's television show, Sesame Street. He and his friend and roommate Ernie form a comic duo that is one of the program's centerpieces, with Bert acting the world-weary foil to Ernie's naive trouble-maker. A characteristic physical feature of Bert is his monobrow.

Bert is intelligent but also grumpy, boring, and easily frustrated. He enjoys such dull activities as bottle cap collecting, oatmeal cooking and watching pigeons. He created a song and dance called "Doin' the Pigeon".

A typical "Ernie and Bert" skit has Ernie coming up with a hare-brained idea and Bert attempting to talk him out of it, ending with Bert completely losing his temper and Ernie remaining oblivious to his own bad idea. The most famous of such routines was the Banana in my ear sketch.

Ernie and Bert share an apartment in the basement of 123 Sesame Street. Although they sleep in separate beds, this has led to the occasional rumor that they are representations of gay lovers.

A website, "Bert is Evil", hosted digitally manipulated images that depicted the muppet consorting with Adolf Hitler, Osama bin Laden, and the KKK. It drew worldwide attention in 2001 when a picture of Bert and Osama bin Laden was taken from the Web site and included in a Bangladesh street protest, a picture of which was distributed by the Reuters news agency. The Web site owner then took down the site, but mirrors still exist.