Gadzooks! Return of our favourite ‘fat boy’ Billy Bunter may be too much to swallow
BILLY BUNTER is set to be relaunched for the 21st century, but the new publisher of the obese comic character has admitted that using images of a fat, greedy schoolboy may be too controversial for modern readers.
Bunter is among the characters in a catalogue of classic British comic titles dating back more than 130 years that are set to be relaunched by Oxford comic publisher Rebellion.
The titles and characters acquired by Rebellion include the comic Valiant and Sexton Blake, a detective, but with rising concern over levels of childhood obesity it is Frank Richards’ creation who is likely to cause most trouble.
Bunter first appeared in cartoon form in the Magnet comic in February 1908. By 1940, when Magnet ceased publication due to a wartime paper shortage, the nation’s favourite anti-hero had become known for his misbehaviour and had been described affectionately by George Orwell as a “fat boy” and “really first-rate character”.
However, Jason Kingsley, the chief executive of Rebellion, which has acquired the rights to the character alongside around 400 other comics, has admitted that Bunter’s boisterous character makes him an “awkward” proposition for the publisher.
He told The Daily Telegraph: “Billy Bunter is an awkward one. Society has moved on and basically he’s a fat, naughty schoolboy. He’s not very politically correct, which is one of the challenges of dealing with literature of this age. Some has aged really well and some has not aged so well. I don’t know how we are going to deal with him. It is certainly up for discussion.”
The BBC made a television star out of him, running seven series of his adventures from 1952 to 1961, but by the late Sixties, Bunter had disappeared from comic strips after brief appearances in Knockout and then Valiant.
Bunter’s comedy came from the playfulness of his greed, but since he dropped off the screen, a child obesity epidemic has resulted in government compaigns encouraging children to be more active.
The UK is now the third fattest country in Europe and around 60,000 primary school children are recorded as obese each year, prompting a government plan to display calorie counts at restaurants and to ask every primary school to boost children’s activity with schemes such as the Daily Mile, an initiative which sees pupils run for 15 minutes a day, on top of regular PE lessons.
Mr Kingsley is unsure about trimming Bunter down in size for the modern age or making him better behaved. “It might spoil the character… sometimes there is a place for characters that are outsiders and don’t fit the moral tropes of today. That said, I haven’t got a clue what we will do with him yet.”
Rebellion’s purchase of the archive of TI Media means it now has the biggest catalogue of English language comic book titles in the world, including Look-in and the 19th-century title Comic Cuts, which was at one stage more popular than The Dandy and is reported to have given the comic book medium its name.
Rebellion recently rebooted the football comic hero Roy of the Rovers, with a new haircut and a million-pound contract. But fans were shocked to discover that the classic character, who was famously loyal to Melchester Rovers, may leave the side when the big money clubs come calling.
‘Basically he’s a fat, naughty schoolboy. He’s not very politically correct, which is one of the challenges’