Christopher Fowler's Blog, page 350

Poetry By The Panel

Thinking further about British comics, I remember taking the Dandy, Buster, Topper, Lion, Beezer and the rest, delivered every Wednesday, along with my parents’ then-broadsheet Daily Mail. My favourite stories concerned The Steel Claw, a man with a metal hand who turned invisible (except for the hand) whenever he was electrocuted. The strip required its [...]

Getting Up London’s Nose

Me, I like a good nose-around in London, and like others I have been puzzled by the detached pair of nostrils stuck two metres up Admiralty Arch which are supposed to represent good luck. There was a story knocking around that they belonged to Napoleon (why?) but the truth turned out to be more mundane [...]

Bye Bye Beano

A ‘beano’ is a feast, but it looks like the party’s finally over. The Dandy, the UK’s oldest children’s comic and home to cartoon strip characters including Desperate Dan, the cow-pie eating cowboy, and its sister paper the Beano are facing closure after 75 years.

In its heyday between the 1950s and 1980s, the Dandy sold [...]

On Growing Older Gracefully

The sudden appearance of Ray Davies at the closing ceremony of the Olympics probably frightened the life out of Britain’s children, making them running behind their sofas in tears. The head Kink had morphed into a cross between the Childcatcher and Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, his orange hair swept in a gravity-defying tonsure around [...]

Re:View – ‘Mack & Mabel’

The West End is clogged with artery-hardening warhorses, so fringe is the saviour of ingenuity – specifically the Southwark Playhouse, where – once you get past the overpowering reek of the mildewed walls and the rumble of trains – Jerry Hermans’ legendary flop has been turned into something dark and glittering.

I admit I have the [...]

Hell Exists

When I asked about the board games (see posts further down) I didn’t think there was much likelihood of someone turfing up a ‘Hell Train’ game but Iain, clearly our resident expert on board games, managed to. Although the game itself looks a little dry, it does have a suitably lurid box lid!

Will London Get A Black Museum?

There’s a rumour knocking around that London is finally to get a police museum that will be open to the public. The infamous ‘Black Museum’ of Scotland Yard began in 1877 (it’s now called the Crime Museum) and is in Victoria Street. It’s in two rooms; the first contains an extensive collection of weapons, all [...]

The Rivals of Charles Dickens

Okay, the Olympics are almost over (with the Paralympics just to come) and we can all get down to some reading again. Notably absent from the opening and closing ceremonies; Charles Dickens – perhaps because he is almost as ubiquitous in London now as he was in his lifetime. This tirelessly energetic man was so [...]

Are There Still Good Board Games?

After emptying your Uzi into a bunch of nuns to facilitate your escape from a betentacled behemoth on a computer screen, shuffling little bits of plastic around a folder piece of cardboard seems somewhat recherche at best. As a kid I played Monopoly (boring), Cluedo (slightly less boring) and a horrendous thing called The Game [...]

London’s Last Olympic Night

Last night: My partner heads off to the athletics at the Olympics (the biggest shock; realising that there were lots of events taking place simultaneously in the same stadium) while I make for the National to see ‘London Road’ (the verbatim play about residents who claimed back their street after it had become infamous as [...]