Why is it that the Fat Controller in Thomas the Tank Engine…?
It’s political correctness gone mad. He was always called Sir Topham Hatt, but in the post war Britain, there were very few fat people, and virtually no obesity. As the post war prosperity spread, so more PC names were slowly introduced, but on the introduction of the stories to America, with its obesity problems, his nicknames were dropped. The Fat Controller is a bit of a parody of a nineteenth century American railroad baron – JP Morgan crossed with I. K. Brunel. Originally created by the Rev. W.V. Audrey during the early 1940’s as a story to entertain his son who was suffering from measles, the adventures of Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends on the island of Sodor have delighted many generations of children and parents alike. Sir Topham Hatt, or less formally the Fat Controller, is the head of the railway in The Railway Series of books written by Rev. W. V. Awdry. In the first two books in the series (The Three Railway Engines and Thomas the Tank Engine) he is known as The Fat
