This room, though, is the domain of former Dandy editor Morris Heggie, who is in the process of pulling together vintage material for a coffee table book on the history of The Beano.
He shows me some bizarre pages from 1941 in which a regular Beano character was used as part of the Allied propaganda effort.
"Derek, The Wild Boy Of The Woods, was not only a nature lover, but also a skilled technician who built a giant Adolf Hitler," he explains. "This mechanical Hitler walks across the English Channel to France, and the Germans are fair pleased to see him. But of course the Wild Boy is inside, operating him, and he wrestles German warplanes from the sky. In the end, of course, he marches back to Britain with a captured U-Boat and they burn the effigy in a bonfire. In another story, the Wild Boy teaches a snake to use a machine gun."
For this sort of thing, the then editor, George Moonie, was put on a Nazi hitlist; had they won the war, he would have been shot. Personally, I'd have given him a medal. Moonie and all the inky geniuses that came after. Happy 70th birthday, Beano. You look really good for your age.
Great reading this about him visiting the Beano office...and whats to come in the 70 years book in September......lets hope we see the above
