Poetic Licence: Return to Beano Town

A copy of the first edition of `The Beano' from 1938 sold for a record pounds 6,200 at auction this week. Of the strips within, only Lord Snooty will be familiar to today's `Beano' readers

By battlements at Bunkerton, the castle

The remnants of an untouched "topping spread"

Since Scrapper, Doubting Thomas and Lord Snooty

Were ambushed by the Gasworks Gang instead

And Bunkerton is falling down

When I return to Beano Town

The Menace lies in wait for softy Walter

His catty and the shock of hair the same

And after the denouement, still shouts, "Ooyah!"

When punished by his dad in final frame.

A weekly thrashing on the bum

No social workers ever come.

Where Teacher wakes to mortar-boarded bedposts

Cane-patterns on his curtains, teeth in glass

A wife who calls him "dear" and is his double

Will make him tea and send him to his class

To teach what arid stuff he knows

And leaden-hearted, off he goes

Past Biffo, lateral thinker/style disaster

His weekly catch phrase: "Ah the very thing!"

Who's busy solving problems for a butcher

With giant magnet, fishing-rod and string.

The large white fiver which he's won

Not quite enough to buy a gun.

Then back in Bash Street, Danny, Plug and Fatty

Will watch resigned, as Smiffy gets it wrong

The Three Bears grow obese on mash and bangers

While Roger dreams up dodges all day long

And Little Plum, your redskin chum

Prefixes every noun with "Um"

Where mums remain at home to do the housework

And dads all have moustaches and a job

Where slipperings and canings come routinely

And slap-up feeds still only cost ten bob

Where order never quite broke down

For long decades in Beano Town

(Ho ho readers. Now for a feast.)