Saturday 25 September 2004

Jings! Crivvens! Help ma Boab!

This time, they've gone too far:
FOR decades, he gave not a jot for political correctness or cholesterol levels by encouraging his horse with jaggy spurs, six-gun at the ready and consuming live cow pies. Alas, the good times are over for Desperate Dan. The children’s favourite is the latest recipient of a makeover for more politically correct times.
This is not the Dan we know and respect.

For starters, what about this:

Gone too is the pistol, which was said to promote gun culture. It used to be seen poking out of the top of Dan’s holster but has now disappeared - although the holster remains.
A disarmed Dan! Doesn't that mean that the great man's statue will have to be altered?

(photo from Michael Laing's website)

And if Dan's gun has to go surely Minnie the Minx will have to lose her catapult. Will it be safe to walk the streets of Dundee now that honest citizens have lost their weapons? I mean, would you wander down the Nethergate on a Friday night without carrying your own personal backpack nuke? I certainly wouldn't.

It gets worse:

Also axed are the spurs and Dan’s dramatic method of preparing his dinner by tearing cows apart, both of which are regarded as too overtly cruel to animals.
"Cruel to animals". Nonsense: there are far too many marauding hordes of bovines rampaging through the streets of Scotland's fourth city. Their excessive wind probably caused the Tay Bridge Disaster.

Dundonians are nevertheless looking forward to being introduced to the Dandy's

first ethnic minority character, an Afro-Caribbean boy detective called, wait for it, Dreadlock Holmes.
I am sure that young Dread will carry on in the successful tradition of his esteemed predecessor.

But I did notice this little snippet about Dreadlock:

who lives with his mum, dad and sister
Ye Gods! A NUCLEAR FAMILY! Next we'll be hearing that Dread's dad has a job and that his mum stays at home looking after the children.

So Dundee hasn't quite mastered this political correctness thing after all. Good. The city by the silvery Tay is more-or-less OK as it is. Just bring back the Jute, Jam and Journalism. And the cow pies. Or pehs, as they say in Dundee.

1 comment:

David Farrer said...

Comments made on previous template:

Neil Craig
It would be interesting to see the sales demographics. How many purchasers are kids & how many are trying to recapture their youth. Certainly it isn't in the papers for the kids.

13 October 2004, 21:56:04 GMT+01:00
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Roland Watson
I've got a compilation of Dan's stories from his debut in 1937. I'll have to check whether he actually used his pistol in any story. 
 
After all, who needs a gun when you have superman strength!? 
 
Are they going to feed him vegetarian lasagne from now on? 
 
Roland.

1 October 2004, 13:22:05 GMT+01:00
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Emily
Who knows? There could have been many a reason come up since then for us to give Britain the shaft. Everyone else in the empire did.

30 September 2004, 19:31:01 GMT+01:00
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David Farrer
If they'd had locks back in the 1770's wouldn't Tony Blair now be ruling America?!

30 September 2004, 17:42:51 GMT+01:00
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Emily
You think changing this Dan fellow is bad? I read somewhere that statues dedicated to soldiers from the American Revolution in Massachussetts actually had trigger locks added to their guns to make them "safer". 
 
Strange times.

29 September 2004, 23:42:09 GMT+01:00
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Alastair Ross
I am surprised that no alteration was made to Dan`s magnificent chin, on the basis that its depiction could offend the half- Scottish Jay Leno.

26 September 2004, 07:21:12 GMT+01:00