Contest winner is the Bomba

AP

Grand-Prize Winner of The Simpsons Character Contest Peggy Black with the show's executive producer Al Jean.

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A new ladies' man is bringing his charms to The Simpsons.

The long-running animated series held a contest to give fans the chance to dream up a new character, and Ricardo Bomba was the winning entry. He's the creation of Peggy Black, 52, of Orange, Connecticut.

"Rrrri-carrr-do Bomba," Black said, extravagantly rolling the "R's" in Spanish-language fashion. "He's someone that all the women love and all the men want to be."

Black said she decided that The Simpsons was lacking a Casanova and came up with the character nicknamed "La Bomba". He'll make his small-screen debut in the US on January 31, in an episode featuring guest star Chris Martin of Coldplay.

The episode had been mostly completed, with a spot reserved for the contest character.

In Million Dollar Maybe, Homer Simpson is rushing to meet Marge for a date when he encounters Bomba in the episode that centres on a winning lottery ticket.

It's possible Bomba could appear again, said executive producer Al Jean, who helped judge the contest. He described the contest, part of the show's celebration of its 20th year, as a thank you to loyal fans.

Black, who counts herself among them, was encouraged to enter by Dwight Vann, 42, a colleague at the Hospital of Saint Raphael in New Haven, Connecticut, where she is operations manager for the cancer centre and a radiation therapist.

Her favourite character is Bart Simpson, she said, "because he's such a bad boy. He's so misunderstood."

In pondering her contest entry, Black decided there was a void on The Simpsons and that Springfield needed "something like a Casanova," she said.

Bomba, a handsome, smooth-talking South American nicknamed "La Bomba," works at the town's nuclear power plant by day and "by night, works Springfield's singles scene," as Fox describes him.

So is Bomba the man of her dreams?

"I'm married to the man of my dreams," Black replied.

She'd bounced ideas for her creation off co-worker Vann, and then rewarded him when she won the grand prize of a trip to Los Angeles to work with the show's producers: She invited Vann to join her.

A highlight of the visit was watching Bomba brought to life by animators.

"I described the character and they drew him so I could see if that was my vision of him," she said. "It's amazing to see how they captured what I imagined. He's over the top."

Black, who's still marvelling at her sudden brush with Hollywood success, brushes away a question about the lack of a cash prize.

"I'm going to be immortalised forever by making a Simpsons character," she said.

More than 25,000 entries were received in the contest for the show, which is marking its 20th year on TV.

- AP