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Monday, March 20, 2017

Fake news!

According to today's Metro, I designed Dennis the Menace's iconic red and black jumper. That's quite an accomplishment I should be proud of... considering it happened in 1951, eight years before I was born!
http://metro.co.uk/2017/03/17/freddie-fox-is-the-new-voice-behind-dennis-the-menace-this-is-going-to-be-blam-6515147/



The article even quotes me on stuff. I've never even spoken to the Metro but my quotes are from a BBC item from a while back. However, Metro didn't do their research properly, and somehow confused me with David Law. Heck, they even reckon that Dennis "made his debut" on the back of a cigarette packet, intimating it was published like that.

The facts: when The Beano were creating Dennis the Menace in 1951, editor Ian Chisholm did a rough sketch of the character on the back of a fag packet to show artist David Law what he wanted. As we know, David Law did a fantastic job on the character, later adding the distinctive striped jumper.

While the Metro mistake amused me, there's also a serious edge to it because it denies David Law his credit, and there's a possibility the error will be copied by other sources in the future. Ironically, the Metro's tagline is "News... but not as you know it".

Unless, of course, I'm a time-traveller and the story is true. With the crackpot way the 21st Century has gone so far anything is possible. 


3 comments:

paddykool said...

Ha ha !! Isn't "history" wonderful? It really makes you wonder what to believe at all sometimes.One to cut out and keep ,alright, Lew.

Lew Stringer said...

Indeed. I'm one of the bloggers who *doesn't* make ridiculous claims but it seems others are doing it for me! :)

Anonymous said...

Wow!

Perhaps the time-travel thing is true.

You know, people criticize Wikipedia. It's not without faults, but some of the "fake news" I've seen in newspapers is far worse than anything Wikipedia has done.

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