Frank Dickens

Frank William Huline-Dickens (9 December 1931 – 8 July 2016) was a British cartoonist, best known for his strip "Bristow", which ran for 51 years in the Evening Standard and was syndicated internationally.[1][2] According to Guinness World Records, "Bristow" was the longest running daily cartoon strip by a single author. The character Bristow is even one year older than that, as he debuted in Dickens' older series Oddbod in The Sunday Times in 1960. Due to his popularity he received his own spin-off series soon afterwards.[3] Dickens broke the original record held by Marc Sleen, whose The Adventures of Nero was drawn for 45 years without any assistance.[4][5] However, even Dickens' record has been broken in his turn by Jim Russell, whose series The Potts ran for 62 years.[4][6] [7] Dickens received eight awards for "Strip Cartoonist of the Year" from the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain.

For the British biochemist, see Frank Dickens (biochemist).

Career

Born in Hornsey, London, the son of a painter and decorator, Dickens left school at the age of 16, and began working for his father. He then took a job as a buying clerk in an engineering firm for three months, before in 1946 deciding to pursue an ambition to become a champion racing cyclist. Legend has it that he moved to Paris after his National Service but failed to make a living at cycling, so he tried to make money by selling cycling cartoons to French magazines, including L'Équipe and Paris Match. The part about moving to France is, however, untrue, though much repeated.[8] A self-taught artist, he had his first cartoon published in a British national newspaper, the Sunday Express on 30 September 1959.[9] Work in the Evening Standard, Daily Sketch and Daily Mirror followed, and in December 1960 he began a three-month period at the Sunday Times, where he took his strip "Oddbod". One of the characters in that strip was developed into the bowler-hatted Bristow. The Bristow strip first appeared in regional papers, before being taken up by the Evening Standard on 6 March 1962.[10]

In 1971 Bristow was produced on stage at the ICA, London, starring Freddie Jones, and in 1999 Dickens himself adapted it as a six-part series for BBC Radio 4, featuring Michael Williams, Rodney Bewes and Dora Bryan. Anne Karpf observed in The Guardian: "From cartoon strip to radio series is no longer a large leap, although Frank Dickens's Bristow, about an idle paper-pusher in a large firm, scarcely invites the kind of Superman cartoon radio techniques that have become so familiar. Yet the first in this new Radio 4 series cleverly managed to sound simultaneously knowing and naïf."[11]

Since 1966 twelve Bristow compilations in book form have been published: by Constable (1966), Allison & Busby (1970), Abelard-Schuman (1972, 1973, 1974, 1975), Futura (1976), Barrie & Jenkins (1978), Penguin Books (1981), Macmillan (1982), and Beaumont Book Company (Australia, 1977, 1978).[12] The most recent is The Big, Big, Big, Bristow Book (Little, Brown & Company, 2001).[13]

The strip that brought Dickens greatest financial success, through syndication in the United States, was "Albert Herbert Hawkins: The Naughtiest Boy in the World" - which reportedly captures the "essential naughtiness" of its author.[14]

Dickens has also published several children's books, as well as thrillers connected with bicycle racing: A Curl Up and Die Day (Peter Owen Publishers, 1980)[15] and Three Cheers for the Good Guys (Macmillan, 1984).

On 2 February 2012, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a tribute to Frank Dickens called Holy Mackerel – It’s My Life![16] to mark his 80th birthday, narrated by Bernard Cribbins and with contributors who included fellow cartoonists Ralph Steadman and Rick Brookes. The programme was repeated on 13 May 2012.

Dickens died on 8 July 2016 after a long illness.[17][18]

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References
  1. Angus Mcgill, "Frank Dickens Celebrates 10,000 Bristow Strips", Evening Standard, 25 July 1997, p. 22.
  2. "Goodbye Bristow". Evening Standard. 11 April 2001. Retrieved 5 October 2008.
  3. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 September 2016. Retrieved 2015-08-28.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  4. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 22 April 2016. Retrieved 2016-09-17.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  5. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 25 March 2016. Retrieved 2015-08-28.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  6. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 27 September 2016. Retrieved 2016-09-17.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  7. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 18 September 2016. Retrieved 2015-08-28.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  8. "A review of The Great Boffo". Podium Café. 9 August 2015. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
  9. Dickens official website.
  10. Dickens' biography at British Cartoon Archive
  11. Anne Karpf, "More of the same, by George", The Guardian, 24 April 1999.
  12. "Bristow in Print".
  13. The Big Big Big Bristow Page.
  14. "Dickens, Frank". British Cartoon Archive. University of Kent. Archived from the original on 16 July 2007. Retrieved 5 October 2008.
  15. Alex Hamilton, "A cartoonist rides down a novel road," The Guardian, 1 July 1980, p. 9.
  16. Holy Mackerel – It’s My Life! reviewed by Laurence Joyce, Radio Times.
  17. Post on his official Facebook page
  18. "Frank Dickens, creator of Bristow comic strip – obituary", The Telegraph, 11 July 2016.

Further reading
  • Michael Bateman, Funny Way to Earn a Living: A Book of Cartoons and Cartoonists (London: Leslie Frewin, 1966), pp. 55–7.
  • Keith Mackenzie, "Cartoonists and their work, No.3: Dickens", The Artist, August 1969, pp. 122–4.
  • Mark Bryant, Dictionary of Twentieth-Century British Cartoonists and Caricaturists (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), pp. 59–60.
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