…when this ol’ Jurassic was at infant school along with Methuselah and Co., primary sources of reading amusement were the comic cuts… in the UK, these included ‘the Dandy’, ‘the Beano’, and ‘the Topper’…

…and unforgettably, the characters populated within their covers ranged from Dennis the Menace, Beryl the Peril, Desperate Dan, and the Bash Street Kids… as role models for modern-day children, I s’pose they  would be frowned on, as the naughtier their exploits, the funnier, and therefore more interesting to us wee readers, they became… but survive they all did, week after week, scrape after scrape, mischief after mischief… now here’s the thing… much as their behaviour may have pulled a tut-tut or three from their comic long-suffering parents and exasperated schoolmasters, NUTHIN they did was too outrageous… they were fun, entertaining, and truth be known, they provided another means of adding to our junior propensity to…