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Paul Nathan Guy "Pingu" Winters OA MP*AC (6 July 1980 - 3 March 2016), also known as Pingu Paul Winters, was an actor and television personality.

Born in Zürich, Winters spent a great majority of his life living in Switzerland to British-American parents. In 1986, he responded to a casting call for a supporting actor; he got casted as Pingu, and he began to go by that name because of how much his personality mirrors his on-screen character. He was a reclusive character, refusing to live in Cartoonopolis for his home in Switzerland and his council flat at the Henson Gardens in London.

After his show was cancelled, Pingu took a two-year hiatus in acting and began to work on his crafts as a writer in literature and songwriting, musician, and producer for an unnamed indie label. In 2003, he received a notification from Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder that HIT had auctioned to revive the show, and returned to acting sometime after. He began to take up online work, having already co-managed the official website with his show's production company, Trickfilmstudio (now Editoy). He voice-acted in several online radio dramas and animated series, most notable being Portnoy in Trixie Dalle (2006-2009), Jamesetta Jones in The Kew Gardens Already Grew! (2008-2010), and Courier Blackmarket in With My Little Eye (2012-2014). Pingu began to develop depressive symptoms and anxiety after he became disillusioned with the Henson Flats being affected by Cartoonopolitan life, and died of heart palpitations from anorexia, bulimia, and alcohol use in his Henson Gardens flat on March 3, 2016. He continues to be a cultural icon as his show was aired numerous times on multiple continents, and was posthumously awarded the Order of Antarctica and the Order of the Merit of Penguins.

Early life
Winters was born on 6 July 1980 at the Balgrist University Hospital (German: Universitätsklinik Balgrist) in Zürich, Switzerland. The first of two children, his father, Paul Winters, is a British-American former musician who now works as a courier. His mother, Polly Margaret (née Mead) is a British actor who narrated in films in the early to mid-1980s. His paternal grandfather is a musician and a weight-lifter who participated in several competitions, later retiring in the 1960s. Winters was an active child growing up, often visiting his friends' houses and homes, and loved playing sports, most particularly ice hockey. He has been described as strong-willed by peers, but is often prone to misbehaving. He has been described as "almost the polar opposite of his younger sister Mary, who is quite shy and reserved."

Winters attended the Outdoors School for Excelling Penguins in Whitby, England, a mixed primary-secondary school, along with fellow pupils Attin Page, Terry Goldberg, Peter Reginald, and school sweetheart Gabby Pascal. He graduated in 2006.

Pingu: 1990-2006
Winters was inspired by frequenting movie theatres and plays as a child, due to his parents' leniency on television and video games. Although he was interested by theatre as a child, he was not particularly interested in acting; "I wanted to become a marine biologist, because I didn't consider acting to be a 'true profession'. As I grew up, I started to think more about acting, and I thought about it even more when I was in school." Learning from his experiences of watching other people and his home movies, he and his family took a holiday to Zürich, and auditioned for a supporting role as Hugo in an unnamed pilot. After a series of auditions, he found a letter from the acting company; the letter congratulated the family on being hired for the job. After Winters' parents read the letter to him, he became shocked and fainted from the news. The studio then began to record a pilot in 1986, which was not leaked until the 2010s. The role, which was previously tested on another actor 6 years earlier, was given to Winters, and the character was subsequently renamed in the process as "Pingu". He began to adopt the name for himself, even in real-life situations, and began introducing himself as Pingu Paul from then on. When asked whether it was "Pingu" or "Pingu Paul", he quipped, "generally Pingu, but in some situations I go by Pingu Paul instead. Either one of those two work."

Pingu's family began to buy a house near the studio in Russikon, and began to divide Pingu's time between school on weekdays and acting on weekends; his parents also set up a schedule for him, and he frequently moved between Whitby and Russikon. "I had a script that said something like 'you're talking to your friends about your sled'. This sort of improvisation gave me some freedom as to what I could say in grammelot, even by inserting a few English words here and there."

Soon after the first episode aired, the show made some revenue, and the company that produced it divided its equal worth amongst themselves and the family. In spite of the show's success, he kept the same schedule even until its final episode in 2006, stating that he "didn't want to fall into the trap of child actors" and "wanting to make sure [Pingu] was well behaved and not be a trainwreck of a person thereafter". After the show ended, the money largely came from re-tapings of the show, and were given some revenue from the distributors. Shortly thereafter, he retired from acting.