Watch out for pranks – Dennis the Menace fan club is back

THE Beano comic has relaunched the “Dennis and Gnasher Fan Club” in celebration of its 80th birthday – but as a smartphone app.

The comic first hit the shelves on July 30 1938 as a companion to The Dandy, published eight months earlier.

Home to Dennis the Menace, his dog Gnasher, Minnie the Minx and The Bash Street Kids, The Beano has become a hit with the digital generation. Beano.com is said to be the fastest growing children’s website in Britain.

In addition to a guest editorship by David Walliams, the comedian and children’s author, and an exhibition in its native Dundee, the birthday celebrations include relaunching the fan club, which closed in 2010. Membership of the app is free and provides printable club badges and membership certificates – and once members access a code-protected area, the comic’s traditional world of pranks is open to them.

Suggestions range from the benign – make a bowl of cereal and freeze it, before giving it to your parents “for hilarity to ensue” – to the potentially troublesome – hide your teachers’ pens and pour food in their desk drawers – and topping cupcakes with mayonnaise.

Created by publisher DC Thomson, The Beano sold almost two million copies weekly at its height in the Fifties.

Dennis the Menace debuted on March 17 1951 and weeks later was given the trademark striped jumper.

In his editor’s letter, Walliams said: “I don’t think I’d have got into writing my books without Beano.”