Frank Dickens

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

Frank William Huline Dickens (born 2 February 1932) is a British cartoonist, best known for his strip "Bristow", which ran for 41 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. Dickens has received eight awards for "Strip Cartoonist of the Year" from the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain.

Career

Born in Hornsey, London, the son of a painter and decorator, Dickens left school at the age of sixteen 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. 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. A self-taught artist, he had his first cartoon published in a British national newspaper in the Sunday Express on 30 September 1959. Work in the Evening Standard, Daily Sketch and Daily Mirror followed, and in December 1960 Dickens 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.

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."[3]

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).[4] The most recent is The Big, Big, Big, Bristow Book (Little, Brown & Company, 2001).[5]

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.[6]

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)[7] 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![8] 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.

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. ↑ The Guardian, 24 April 1999.
  4. ↑ "Bristow in Print".
  5. ↑ The Big Big Big Bristow Page.
  6. ↑ "Dickens, Frank". British Cartoon Archive. University of Kent. Retrieved 5 October 2008.
  7. ↑ Alex Hamilton, "A cartoonist rides down a novel road," The Guardian, 1 July 1980, p. 9.
  8. ↑ Holy Mackerel – It’s My Life! reviewed by Laurence Joyce, Radio Times.

Further reading

External links

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