Perishers, The

This long-running daily British comic strip was first printed in the Daily Mirror on 19 October 1959.

The stories were about a group of neighbourhood children and a dog who lived in the drab (fictional) town of Crunge. The children initially lived in a 10-foot section of concrete pipe on a building site before moving in 1966 into a disused railway station (after Dr Beeching had closed down most of Britain’s railways).

The main character, Marlon, was extremely amiable but not very bright. Maisie was a little tyrant with a crush on Marlon and a tendency to become violent if she didn’t get her own way.

Wellington was the philosopher of the gang who made go-karts (buggies) to sell. He got his name from his footwear.

Boot was an Old English Sheepdog (who was convinced he was actually an 18th-century lord who had been enchanted into a dog by a gypsy woman). He was owned by Wellington.

Baby Grumplin’ was Maisie’s little brother.

A cast of supporting minor characters included a kindly Indian bloodhound called B.H. Calcutta (Failed); a tortoise (shaped like a World War 2 German helmet) called Adolf Kilroy who thought he was the reincarnation of Adolf Hitler; Dirty McSquirty, the dirtiest boy in town (who was always accompanied by a cloud of flies); and two insects called Fred Beetle (a socialist) and the Caterpillar (who couldn’t turn into a butterfly because he had stunted his growth through smoking). He was also scared of heights.

Each year, the Perishers would visit the seaside for their holiday, and Boot would visit a rock pool and watch a colony of crabs who lived there, sticking his head into the pool to see what was happening. This would cause great consternation to the crabs, who called this visitation “The eyeballs in the sky”.

One crab – the self-appointed religious leader – tried to exploit the situation by using the appearance of the eyeballs as an excuse to extort money from his congregation. Meanwhile, a scientist crab insisted there must be a simple explanation to the mystery of the pooliverse and made telescopes from old tin cans to study the phenomenon.

The great debate about the eyeballs in the sky continued until Boot would wander off until the following year.

The comic strips were written by Maurice Dodd and drawn by Dennis Collins until his retirement in 1983, after which it was drawn by Dodd and later by Bill Mevin.

Regular collections of the strip were published in book form, with a total of 27 Perishers annuals published between 1963 and 1981.

A 20-part animated TV series was produced by FilmFair for the BBC in 1978/1979.

The final Perishers strip appeared in the Daily Mirror on Saturday 10 June 2006. The original cartoon strip returned to the Mirror as reprints in February 2010 due to popular demand.