How's this for insulting men?

Nothing is sancrosanct.

Hush, hush, whisper who dares…Christopher Robin is being replaced by a girl after 80 years.

Robin, everyone's friend in the Hundred Acre Wood, is being written out of a new Walt Disney animated series.

Instead, the studio is creating a new playmate for the "bear of little brain" - a six-year-old tomboy who is to emerge in a clearing, with a back-pack and a plastic helmet.

Studio executives, mindful of the fact that Pooh is their biggest franchise after Mickey Mouse, were quick yesterday to point out that "Christopher Robin is still out there in the woods, playing".

They said that he might even be given a cameo role, walking along a path to meet the new girl.

But in the computer-generated series, My Friends Tigger and Pooh, being produced for 2007, he will virtually vanish, so that audiences can concentrate on the new girl.