Happy birthday Dennis...

'Look! Here's a new pal you'll enjoy - He's the world's wildest boy!'

‘Early in 1951, Beano Editor George Moonie, sub-editor Ian 'Chiz' Chisholm, and David Law, an Edinburgh born artist, began work on a new character whose name was inspired by the Music Hall song "Dennis the Menace from Venice".’

Ah, the Beano.

Yes, Dennis the Menace was sixty last week, hard to believe that Dennis the Menace is even older than I am. Dennis was the naughty boy that I always wanted to be, but couldn’t quite bring myself to risk all the trouble that becoming him would bring me. I was no Walter though. On the Dennis/Walter naughtiness scale (Dennis being a ten and Walter a Zero) I was probably somewhere in the middle or a little above, a six to seven maybe.

Gnasher, his extremely rare Abyssinian Wire-haired Tripe Hound, and Dennis's faithful sidekick didn’t appear until the August of 1968, around the time I obtained my two ‘Dennis’ badges and just before I stopped reading the Beano and moved on to ‘Fantastic’ with Thor, Iron Man, the X-Men, Johnny Future. I traded in Dennis’s naughtiness and Walter’s soppiness for super heroes in lycra tights and flowing capes rather than Dennis’s 'in your face' sweater - such is the fickleness of youth.

Despite no longer reading Dennis’s adventures on a weekly basis I continued to dip in and out of the Beano, summer and Christmas specials, back editions, annuals – I even bought a couple of copies from the seventies a few years back. It didn’t bother Dennis though, he just kept on going and by 1988 his fan club boasted over a million members. For a short while back in my twenties I was one of them – nostalgia was important to me even back then. Was there ever a time I didn't yearn for yesteryear?

They’ve dumbed Dennis’s antics down a little these days. His dad no longer slipper’s him at the end of every episode and Dennis’s punishment is more likely to be to put on an apron and do the washing up. Corporal punishment seems to be frowned upon in polite society and Walter the softie has given up loving flowers quite as much as he used to and has found himself a girlfriend. Dennis still has his water pistol and catapult though, even if he’s not as scary looking as the Dennis I remember, less manic, a little more friendly.

I often think that Dennis was the original punk with that mop of black spiky hair and his black and red striped jumper. Dennis didn’t always wear that distinctive jumper, originally he wore a shirt and a tie. Dennis in a tie, can you imagine it? He stole that jumper a couple of months after first appearing in the Beano when he tied some rockets to a chum for a prank. When he lit the blue touch-papers with a match he sent his chum up into the air at such speed that it literally blew him out of his clothes. Well, what are chums for after all, and it was only a harmless prank and nobody was badly hurt – were they?

I loved the Dennis of my childhood. If the sign said ‘Don’t Walk on the Grass’ then Dennis would walk on it. ‘Wet Paint’ on railings and Dennis would remove the sign so that Walter would lean against them. ‘No Fishing’ and Dennis would be fishing in it, a big pile of fish beside him. If there was a banana skin handy Dennis would place it on the pavement just outside of Walter’s gate, and if there was a muddy puddle to ride through, Dennis would ride his bike through it just in time to cover Walter head to foot in the muddy water.

He always got his comeuppance though. Dennis never got away with it. The final frame always pictured his dad, slipper raised, ready to give Dennis a good 'thwacking'. Dennis's dad always scared me a little, just whose idea was it to give him an Adolph Hitler moustache?

Dennis was bad to the core, naughty beyond belief, more than mischievous, at the very edge of being a hooligan. But I thought he was great and I still do, even though these days he’d probably be served with an ASBO.