Death of a comic book

And so it is that on its 75th birthday the Dandy comic, which saw the light of day in 1937, has now passed away as a tangible palpable paper publication and has migrated to the Internet to exist only in the ether, in cyberspace, for those who are still interested in its brand of humour.

Its sister publication, the Beano, born a year later in 1938, ironically on the eve of World War II, still hangs on for dear life, having recently been granted a reprieve, whilst the Topper and the Beezer, later arrivals, also issuing from the DC Thomson stable, in 1955 and 1956 respectively, long gave up the ghost and were consigned to the comic book graveyard in the sky in 1993. I doubt that it will be long before the Beano goes the way of the Dandy. Still, unlike their two former bedfellows, they will still be available online, for now, and it remains to be seen what their eventual fate will be.


For me personally, these four humorous comics (for, despite their name, not all comic books are humorous, witness many of the American super-hero publications and others), accompanied my childhood and played an important part in entertaining me. Every week I would traipse off to my local newsagent's to collect them, but, as they did not all come out on the same day and I was impatient to have them as soon as I could, I often did not wait for all of them to be saved for me by the newsagent and would have to make more than one weekly trip before I had them all. But I did not mind and even relished the trip to the newsagent's and the anticipation that built up inside me.

These were the comic books that injected laughter and mirth into my childhood years and that preceded in my life such DC Comics as Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and The Flash, to name a few, which engrossed my early adolescent years. I would spend many a moment chuckling to myself as I read the antics of such iconic characters as Dennis the Menace, Minnie the Minx, the Bash Street Kids, Roger the Dodger, and Lord Snooty. Some of the others worth a mention were Desperate Dan, Biffo the Bear, The Three Bears, Little Plum, Ball Boy, Ivy the Terrible, and Billy Whizz. No doubt there were others which do not come to mind at the moment.

By the time the Beezer and the Topper were in financial straits and had to be merged into one between 1990 and 1993, the year of their demise, I was very much grown up (!), and I don't now even recall hearing about the merger at the time. Given my 'advanced' years, I had long ceased to read any comics and, as it was still the pre-Internet era (indeed the pre-desktop pc era), I was busying myself in my spare time reading factual books, composing poetry and trying my hand at painting. The comics of my childhood were reaching the end of the line and I was no longer part of their world, and it seems the children who were buying them were dwindling rapidly, as they defected to other publications more in tune with the changing world. They had become too innocent for the 1990s generation of children who now needed more realistic comic books to feed and fire their imagination... I guess. 

I suppose these developments and demises were to be expected and had been on the cards for some time. Very few things last very long in our modern world of constant change and renewal, where tastes and fashions come and go as swiftly as they never did before in this society of the fleeting and the transient. Now we live on a diet of instant impressions and overnight successes, and the thirst for more and bigger stimuli to keep us from getting bored consumes our lives. And yet, I can't help thinking that the simple comics of my childhood left a more lasting impression and a deeper mark in my psyche than all the wealth of clever novelties, gimmicks and innovations ever will before I too check out of this life.  

The Dandy, the Beano, the Topper and the Beezer, became my constant companions as soon as I was able to read, and together with such other pastimes as marbles, picture cards, toy soldiers, yo-yos, train sets, and stamp-collecting (philately), they filled my out-of-school hours and provided me with the stimulus and fun that I needed without all the mad intensity of today's electronic games and the vagaries of computers that seem to complicate our life today rather than simplify it in spite of all the nonsense spouted by their purveyors. And all these pastimes and hobbies were all the more important as the monochrome television of the time was still very much in its infancy and did not provide the interest, variety and stimulation which it now does with its multiplicity of channels and the huge flat-panel screens that try to mimic the big cinema screen experience.

My childhood world was one consisting of hands-on experience and I interacted directly with the tangible environment around me, not with a cyber world that can only be experienced indirectly. Was this better? I think it was for me the child but I will not press the point. In any case, it is now an academic one in this world of electronic this and electronic that which promises everything but which delivers much less. What I can say for sure is that in the grey post-war world of my tender years, these four comic books introduced a good bit of colour and laughter and amusement which made all the difference, and for that at least I am forever grateful to them and saddened at their demise or banishment to the Internet.

The 'Houses' of my School

I have little recollection of my time at primary school, whether in the infants or juniors, which feels like a century ago, but I do remember a fair amount of my years at secondary school (which nevertheless also feels like a century ago). 

One of the features that really stands out about my secondary school was the five 'houses' of allegiance into which the pupils were divided. Each of these houses was headed by its own Master who usually presided over the morning house assemblies (always religious) that took place there 3 to 4 times a week, when there was no general assembly in the main hall taken by the Headmaster or Deputy Head Master (these titles had not yet been changed to the new genderless title of 'head teacher' for political correctness). 

The names and associated colours of the various houses were as follows:-

Brunel (blue): Named after Isambard Kingdom Brunel (9 April 1806 – 15 September 1859), the English mechanical and civil engineer who built bridges and dockyards, the Great Western Railway, a series of steamships including the first propeller-driven transatlantic steamship and numerous important bridges and tunnels. His designs revolutionised public transport and modern engineering.



Fleming (green): Named after Sir Alexander Fleming (6 August 1881 – 11 March 1955) a Scottish biologist, pharmacologist and botanist. His best-known discoveries are the enzyme lysozyme in 1923 and the antibiotic substance penicillin in 1928, for which he shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1945 with Howard Florey and Ernst Boris Chain. He also wrote many penetrating articles on bacteriology, immunology, and chemotherapy.


Rutherford (red): Named after Ernest Rutherford, 1st Baron Rutherford of Nelson (30 August 1871 – 19 October 1937), a New Zealand-born British chemist and physicist who became known as the father of nuclear physics. He is considered the greatest experimentalist since Michael Faraday (1791–1867). He did a lot more besides and his accomplishments and accolades were considerable, but what's more to the point here is that this was the House I was allocated to when I was admitted to the school and I stayed there right to the end. And after all these years I still recall the name of my House Master, one Wynn Owen, a true-blue Welshman of impeccable morals (though this did not stop him from using corporal punishment on his young charges, a common practice in those days).


Stephenson (yellow): Named after George Stephenson (9 June 1781 – 12 August 1848), an  English civil engineer and mechanical engineer who built the first public railway line in the world to use steam locomotives. Renowned as being the "Father of Railways", the  Victorians considered him a great example of diligent application and thirst for improvement. His rail gauge of 4 feet 8¹⁄₂ inches (1,435 mm), sometimes called "Stephenson gauge", is the world's standard gauge.

Telford (white): Named after Thomas Telford (1757–1834), a Scottish civil engineer, architect and stonemason, and a noted road, bridge and canal builder. He designed numerous infrastructure projects in his native Scotland, as well as harbours and tunnels. Such was his reputation as a prolific designer of highways and bridges, he was dubbed The Colossus of Roads, and in the early 19th century, he was elected as the first President of the Institution of Civil Engineers.



These were the Houses of allegiance at my school and to indicate our respective House we wore the appropriately coloured ribbon sewn across the top of our blazer pocket which bore the emblem or badge of our school. At the time I had little idea who were the men after whom the Houses were named, not because we hadn't been told but because we paid scant attention to such things at our young age. Now of course I see things differently and, having watched many tv documentaries on great men of the past, I know more about them and my curiosity has been awakened, for these were great men indeed who changed the face of our world with their discoveries, inventions and creations. 

I'm glad that my school chose great men of science and technology to represent our 'Houses', worthy men dedicated to their specialist field, men with a vision, men who revolutionised our lives and our surroundings, men who put Britain squarely on the map of greatness. But that was then, and this is now, and today endless fawning adulation is lavished on pop idols, piss artists, footballers and shallow celebrities who love to love themselves and be loved by everyone. So perhaps today the school's houses of allegiance would be given the names of media celebrities, overpaid footballers and movie stars instead of truly great men of inquiry and dedication to a cause higher than themselves. Times have certainly changed.

The Olympic Flame for the London games was round our way yesterday, so I decided to down tools, so to speak, and go out and meet it. I would never have the opportunity to do this again in my lifetime and so I convinced myself that it was worth the effort. Certainly the hot sunny weather left me with no excuse not to do it, unless of course I were to make a case for it being too hot and therefore too exhausting! Well I didn't.

I headed out of the house, using Shank's pony,  just after 3pm, at a leisurely pace, crossing the park nearby and making for the high street. Half way there  I regretted not having taken any water with me, as the walk and the exposure to the sun was already making me thirsty. But never mind, it was all in a good cause. What cause, do I hear you whisper? Why, my cause of course! The cause of my seeing the Olympic Flame, as I've said at the start of this piece.



On reaching the high street I merged into the flow of people that were making their way to the road through which the Flame was expected to pass. Within minutes I was there and milling about in the crowd already lining the road on both sides. As was to be expected, there was an overwhelming preponderance of mothers and their darling little sprogs and after spending a little time on one side of the road, I decided to cross over to the other side where, I judged, I would be in a better position to follow the Flame.

Big mistake! I came out of the shade on one side of the road and entered the other shadeless side where the sun shone on us relentlessly. However, I was now there and couldn't be bothered to go back. Soon the advertising lorries were parading past, and our eyes were regaled with the sight of Coca-Cola, Samsung and Lloyd's TSB, among others, a truly unforgettable sight! Aboard them were young people smiling and waving to us. So I waved back. As one does. 

The next moment someone on a loud-haler informed us that the Olympic Torch would be arriving in five minutes, at which point a loud cry went up from the crowd in anticipation, though my mouth remained resolutely shut, which helped to conserve body moisture, or so the theory goes. We all waited expectantly as the sun beat down on us. Because of the bend in the road, it was not possible to see far ahead, so we could only go by what our ears reported to us.

Then, as I was beginning to wonder where the flippin' flame was, I heard  loud cheers and clapping from the crowds just ahead and I realised that the the Olympic Torch was about to make its appearance. I whipped my camera out in readiness and took a few pics of the assembled throng and then waited for the 'apparition' I had come to witness. The next moment I espied police outriders gliding along and then, yes, there it was, held aloft in the hand of a runner who was coming towards us. Click, click, click, went the countless cameras, while other cameras, cellphones and camcorders recorded it all silently.

No sooner had the Torch appeared than it was passing us by and in one body we surged forward after it, still snapping and filming. I held the camera aloft as I went, trying to avoid heads that rose above me, and take pics of the flame instead. Tall people have a definite advantage here. On reaching the road junction, the runner stopped and another runner took over with his own torch, and then they were off again. And so were we! 

Round the corner we went and along the next road, where all traffic had been halted to let the runner go by. I followed part of the way but owing to the crowding and the distancing of the runner (whom it was difficult to follow at the same pace through the throng of people) I gave up further pursuit and turned back. After all, I had done what I came to do, namely to see the Olympic Flame and take a few pics of it. I was now tired and thirsty and a bit sweaty and it was time to go back home.

On the way, feeling in a bit of a celebratory mood, I availed myself of the local patisserie to get myself some honey-balls. And that was that, folks! I could at least say in years to come that I had been to see the Olympic Flame 'in the flesh'. Sounds much more exciting than it was but that's not my fault. I made sure I was there. The rest was not in my hands. 

“Give me a child until he is seven..."

“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.”

This Jesuit motto is the mantra of a television series in thee UK that has filmed a group of individuals every seven years from the age of seven in 1964 till the present day at the age of 56 and it looks likely to continue, which means that we will eventually face the prospect of the participants dying off one by one as they go into old age, including the producer, Michael Apted, and that’s when questions may well be asked as to whether it ought to go on. Whatever happens then, I do hope it will go on a bit further and accompany the chosen subjects well into their sixties. And if any pass away in the process, I suppose we could be there at their funeral, or at least speak with their friends and family about their lives. Having said that, your humble blogger is no spring chicken and may pop his clogs before any of the series participants do and not witness any of the attrition that will occur one day. This is real life, not a scripted tv drama.

For me it has been a fascinating and revealing series so far, witnessing every seven years both the visible physical changes in the subjects and the no-less obvious and natural changes in their mental development, but also, and just as fascinating, the changes taking place in the world around them. We start from a first black-and-white episode showing a truly suffocating dark and dismal environment and progress in subsequent episodes to a world of greater colour and light and growing optimism. The series develops in a very natural way as we follow the participants through childhood, adolescence, adulthood and on to what may now be termed their later years. Admittedly it is all in the form of brief snapshots, but it is nevertheless a potent window into the growing-up process, evolving society and a rapidly changing world.

Although the programme focused on a specific group of children, it is in a way about each and every one of us. Though the course of our own lives may differ somewhat from that of those individuals, the process is the same and the successive stages are the same and we see ourselves in those children as they pass through the various ages and stages of man. We have many common points with them and we recognise many of their experiences in our own. We witness their joys and sorrows, their successes and failures, their triumphs and defeats. The older we are, the more nostalgic we are about the early years, the years of our childhood, our youth, and the younger we are, the more we are intrigued to see how life is faced at an older age. We look back or we look forward and in both cases their life is a reflection of ours and ours of theirs.

“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” But is this really so? It sounds good, has a good mystical ring to it, but if the series demonstrates one thing it is that this is so often not the case after all. Several of the participants have gone on to lead lives that we could not have imagined from seeing them at age seven. Some have had better and some worse lives as adults than we might have imagined. And some have been a real revelation. But all have been a slice of human lives at various stages and moments, divided into 7-year intervals, and I for one have been spurred to think long and hard about life and our journey from the cradle to the grave. We can do nothing about the one or the other, but we may do a great deal about the in-between. And that is what really matters in the end.

So now the seven-year-old children of 1964 are the fifty-six-year-old adults of 2012 and, if we are fortunate enough, we may hope to revisit them in another seven years’ time when they are sixty-three. By definition it is a process that cannot go on forever and it is already nearer to its end than its beginning, given the average human age-span, but so far it has been an intriguing and moving journey and for the moment it continues. I personally have learnt a lot from it in ways which are more to do with attitude, perception, approach and acceptance than any concrete practical skill or aptitude or technique. Being older than them by a few years, I have seen myself in them and recognised the grey grim world they were born into.

Seven Up has, as I've said, taken us through a large part of the cycle of life in seven-year leaps and by so doing it has set before us the reality or realities of life and an ever-changing world. It has shown us the hopes, dreams and aspirations of a representative group of individuals, and the many things that life throws at us all along the way. There is joy and sorrow there, happiness and sadness, triumph and tragedy, goodness and badness, and we can all identify with that and recognise ourselves in them and the scheme of things. If I am still around to see the next episode in 2019, I will do so… if only to say: "Their journey through life has reflected my own and the challenges they have encountered along the way have also been my own." The differences are only really in the detail.

“Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.”  I’m not so sure about this, but whatever the truth of it, the contrast between us as children and us as adults, as poignantly witnessed in the Seven-Up series, is such a huge one that it is difficult to believe that we are the same individuals. And therein lies the fascination in the series. We see the child become the man, mentally and physically, and we are transfixed by the transformation. We note with astonishment the power of the years to transform us into something wholly different from what we were when we came into the world. The inexorable passage from cradle to grave - a journey that we all must make, in a life that may be short or long, happy or sad - is a truly gripping experience and must be the core reason why this documentary series has been so successful. It is I suppose a concrete witnessing of the flame of life that eventually and ineluctably weakens, falters and goes out and we thus pass into history. Sic transit gloria vitae.