Frank Dickens

Frank Dickens, the cartoonist, who has died aged 84, was the creator of the comic strip “Bristow”, which ran for 41 years in the Evening Standard, was syndicated round the world, and became, according to The Guinness Book of World Records, the longest-running daily cartoon strip by a single author.

Bristow, a round-faced, bowler-hatted, moustachioed buying clerk at the City conglomerate Chester-Perry, is the archetypal downtrodden office worker. The comic strip featured him doing daily battle against the frustrations of bureaucracy, chatting up the girls in the typing pool, and dreaming of becoming a brain surgeon, while finding ways of avoiding any useful work. Bristow’s epic tome Living Death

in the Buying Department never finds a publisher. He lives in a small bedsit in East Winchley and commutes to work by train, invariably arriving late.

As the Evening Standard once noted about Bristow’s creator, “Frank’s working week is as follows: Monday: Up at 5.45am. Thinks up six ‘Bristows’. Draws them. 9.00am faxes them to office. End of working week.” This left plenty of time for visits to his favourite pubs. Born December 9 1931, died July 8 2016