Desperate Dan

[Rover_KE]

Why was Desperate Dan so called?

For the first 12 years of my life I thought 'desperate' meant 'having superhuman strength and a voracious appetite'.

Rover

[Lateralthinking1]

Why was Desperate Dan so called?

For the first 12 years of my life I thought 'desperate' meant 'having superhuman strength and a voracious appetite'.

Rover

Early on, he was a desperado.

People said "why don't you come to your senses?". So he came down from his fences, opened the gate and switched sides.

[johncorrigan]

Early on, he was a desperado.

People said "why don't you come to your senses?". So he came down from his fences, opened the gate and switched sides.

I used to think he was loosely based on the character Dangerous Dan McGrew from 'The Shooting of Dan McGrew' by Robert Service written in the first decade of the 20th Century, and they changed it to desperate as it was also alliterative - usually the fashion in comics. He was certainly a much tougher character when I started reading comics - he's been made more PC in latter days - give it a couple of years and he'll be on the mcaroni pies.

http://www.paulmorris.co.uk/beano/strips/desperatedan.htm

[Lateralthinking1]

I used to think he was loosely based on the character Dangerous Dan McGrew from 'The Shooting of Dan McGrew' by Robert Service written in the first decade of the 20th Century, and they changed it to desperate as it was also alliterative - usually the fashion in comics. He was certainly a much tougher character when I started reading comics - he's been made more PC in latter days - give it a couple of years and he'll be on the mcaroni pies.
http://www.paulmorris.co.uk/beano/st...speratedan.htm

You might be right John. Certainly Dan's brother Barney McGrew influenced a generation.

[kernelbogey]

Why was Desperate Dan so called?

For the first 12 years of my life I thought 'desperate' meant 'having superhuman strength and a voracious appetite'.

Rover

Thanks, Rover_KE, for starting this thread - welcome! - and for this very interesting observation. I realised on reading it that I must have had some similar sense as a boy of the meaning of 'desperate', at least in that context.

Desperate Dan was the most prominent character for me in the Dandy which, together with the Beano, was to be found in the houses and pockets of working-class contemporaries - but not (alas, I felt) in our house in a more snooty street of bungalows and semis. I think they were so thoroughly disapproved of by my father that I didn't even need to ask if I could 'take' one or the other.

Of course when the Eagle came along, famously printed on better quality paper which is said to have made it acceptable to middle-class parents, as no doubt did the whiff of Christian morality emanating with the scent of its superior colour printing, I was allowed a weekly order. So I identified with the officer-class Dan Dare (there's that 'Dan' again), while Digby's NCO class and style was made obvious by his northern accent.

The sense of violent danger that, for me, hung around Desperate Dan seemed to echo the faint sense of menace that my family perceived in the council estate over the back wall of our garden, and that I experienced more directly in my contemporaries at my junior school who came from that way. For all I knew, cow pie was eaten for tea in their houses, and their Dads shaved with a hammer.

So were class attitudes learned by that small boy. In my imagination I set off with Dan and Digby in pursuit of the evil Mekon who no doubt had similar origins....

[mangerton]

Kernelbogey, I could have written and signed your last post; our fathers could have been brothers!

Class distinction reigned in central Scotland too.

[vinteuil]

... I don't know exactly how class discrimination operated in 1950s Wiltshire - but - we were allowed the Beano - but not the Dandy - my father, a pacifist, wd not have allowed the Eagle - and I remember our charlady's children had the Beezer ( which, of course, we envied them) ...

[amateur51]

... I don't know exactly how class discrimination operated in 1950s Wiltshire - but - we were allowed the Beano - but not the Dandy - my father, a pacifist, wd not have allowed the Eagle - and I remember our charlady's children had the Beezer ( which, of course, we envied them) ...

If I remember rightly, the Beezer tended to have the best give-aways

My fondest memory is of those A4 cardboard triangles that gave off a most satisfyingly* loud retort when you whisked them downwards at speed


* satisfying as in 'causing unsuspecting adults to jump with a shout, spill their tea, drop a stitch, that sorta ting

[Nick Armstrong]

gave off a most satisfyingly* loud retort

* satisfying as in 'causing unsuspecting adults to jump with a shout, spill their tea, drop a stitch

Known as "Hornspielers" perhaps...? (Or formerly, at any rate.... )

[amateur51]

Known as "Hornspielers" perhaps...? (Or formerly, at any rate.... )

naughty

[vinteuil]

If I remember rightly, the Beezer tended to have the best give-aways

:

... if we had been foresightful greedy little capitalists, we wd have retained in immaculate condition those comics and especially those giveaways. I understand that the weirdos who buy and collect such things on e-bay and the like will pay hundreds of pounds for a single good copy - much more if with the free giveaway. I could have funded my claret habit if I had been more retentive....

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

If I remember rightly, the Beezer tended to have the best give-aways

My fondest memory is of those A4 cardboard triangles that gave off a most satisfyingly* loud retort when you whisked them downwards at speed


* satisfying as in 'causing unsuspecting adults to jump with a shout, spill their tea, drop a stitch, that sorta ting

Oh yes: I remember these! A single sheet of thin cardboard folded to make two triangles with a thick piece of brown paper "hinge" that flapped open to produce the "retort"! They gave these away with the Topper, too: yclept a "Whizz-Bang" if memory serves.

I got (we were too poor to "take"!) Beano, Topper and Sparky and swapped with the lad next door's Dandy and Hotspur (which I didn't really like). The Beezer was always available in the Barber's: I was fascinated by The Numbskulls: a staff of tiny people who "operated" a man: I often wondered if Woody Allen ever knew the strip - it wasn't a million miles away from the "Sperm" sequence in Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex ... .

[amateur51]

Oh yes: I remember these! A single sheet of thin cardboard folded to make two triangles with a thick piece of brown paper "hinge" that flapped open to produce the "retort"! They gave these away with the Topper, too: yclept a "Whizz-Bang" if memory serves.

I got (we were too poor to "take"!) Beano, Topper and Sparky and swapped with the lad next door's Dandy and Hotspur (which I didn't really like). The Beezer was always available in the Barber's: I was fascinated by The Numbskulls: a staff of tiny people who "operated" a man: I often wondered if Woody Allen ever knew the strip - it wasn't a million miles away from the "Sperm" sequence in Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex ... .

Fondly remembered, ferney but I'm amazed that I haven't heard the sound of a fast-approaching tuk-tuk

[johncorrigan]

... I don't know exactly how class discrimination operated in 1950s Wiltshire - but - we were allowed the Beano - but not the Dandy - my father, a pacifist, wd not have allowed the Eagle - and I remember our charlady's children had the Beezer ( which, of course, we envied them) ...

When I was a kid, Thursday night my dad would work late and bring in the Beano, complete with Rory of the Eagles, which I loved. Friday night was the Topper with some American cartoons in it too. There were two main British producers of comics in the 60s - DC Thompson in Dundee producing the Beano, Dandy, Topper, Beezer, Hotspur, Hornet, Victor, Wizard, Bunty, Judy, Jackie and a pile more; and Fleetway which produced the Eagle, Lion, Tiger, Valiant, Champion, Hurricane, June, Shoot, Chips etc and then eventually the magnificent 2000AD. My favourite was the Hornet but when I was a paperboy I used to spend days getting paid to walk round reading comics before sticking them through a letter box. Those wonderful days of the weekly comic where you were left on tenterhooks for a week wondering what was going to happen to The Deathless Men in V for Vengeance, or what exploit Wilson was going to get up to next, or if Roy was going to manage to retain the trophy for Melchester Rovers, or whether Middenface McNulty would manage to retain his lumps, are largely over. However they were one of the great parts of growing up and where I won't particularly mourn the demise of the Dandy, I am sad at the loss of the weekly comic.

[salymap]

naughty

You may think so, I couldn't possibly comment.

Refers to #9 and 10. I am being punished for my comments as things have moved on