An encounter with Desperate Dan

Dundee used to be famous for its 'three Js' - jute, jam and journalism. 

I don't know about the jute (although I understood that it was used for the best kind of doormats), but the white stone jars of Keiller's Dundee Marmalade were a feature of my childhood. Mum not only bought them for the marmalade: she used them for potting dollops of her succulent and flavoursome Christmas pudding. They made excellent cooking and storage jars, particularly as they were straight-sided, with no lip at the top. I remember them being used for Christmas puddings when we lived in Barry in the 1950s, and then on until 1963, when we moved to Southampton. 

I don't know what happen to Mum's collection of them. She and Dad tended to throw out old things as modern substitutes could be afforded, which is why I possess so very few 'family heirlooms'. These Keiller stone jars would have been discarded with hardly a thought. I'm thinking it happened well before I left school in 1970.

That's a pity. They would have become valuable collectables. See, for instance, this Keiller Dundee Marmalade jar being offered for purchase at this very moment. 

The asking price is £110. Blimey!

This post touches (indirectly) on the third J, journalism. Specifically the publications of D C Thomson & Co Ltd, the still-thriving producer of newspapers, magazines, and comics. If you take the eastern bypass around Dundee city, you can't miss the big D C Thomson printing works on Kingsway East. But the HQ office is in the heart of the city, in a monumental building that looks like a transplant from 1930s Chicago:

That's my own picture. I visited Dundee on a dull afternoon in late May this year. I wasn't expecting to be enthralled by the place, but in fact found it full of interest. It is unfortunately perceived (at least by English travellers) as a humdrum working city, worthy but drab, and lacking the cultural and historical allure that make Edinburgh, Glasgow and Stirling so pre-eminent on the Tourist Trail. Having now seen more of Dundee, I think that's a mistake. 

When I went there, on 26th May, it was mostly open for business as normal (in a Scottish Covid-19 Level 2 restriction sense) but some of the things I wanted to see - like the V&A building on the waterfront, and the McManus Art Gallery, were shut. So I just walked around, camera in hand. 

A lot of the pictures I took are on my Flickr site. I'm just going to show here some of the statues scattered around in the streets. First up, Desperate Dan, the extraordinarily tough and strong cowboy hero of The Dandy comic - a D C Thomson publication, naturally! Here he is, striding through the city centre like an unstoppable tank, dragging a dog:

If you click on the photo to enlarge it, and study what he has in his right hand, you can see that it's a rolled-up copy of The Dandy. 

Desperate Dan was always a supremely confident, vigorous, larger-than-life character, with a cheerful attitude and a giant appetite (especially for Cow Pie). I think the sculptor has caught that self-confident vigour perfectly; and presumably this statue is also a metaphor for the city's own robust characteristics. Mind you, I don't remember Desperate Dan being quite so fat, nor possessing a chin quite so big. I'm talking about 1960 or so, when I would read a friend's Dandy. Surely he was slimmer back then? But I've now found a photo of mine, taken in 2018, of a copy of The Dandy from 1984. By then, about twenty-five years onwards, his girth had definitely increased (too much Cow Pie?) and his chin had become rather prominent:

I can't remember what the Desperate Dan cartoon stories were all about. Vaguely Wild West, I suppose, but clearly by 1984 he could appear on a 'modern' building site! Nor do I remember any dog. Dennis the Menace (of The Beano, another D C Thomson comic, the one I read most often up to age eleven) certainly had a dog, called Gnasher I think. So maybe Dan has borrowed Dennis' dog for this stroll through Dundee. The dog is looking backwards at naughty Minnie the Minx, another Beano character, who has taken aim at Desperate Dan with her catapult. She's wasting her time: he'll never feel whatever she launched at him.

Gosh, catapults! Really, I never saw one in a child's hands, ever. Ditto, a pea shooter, which was another standard accessory for kids in these comics, at least in their golden hey-day. Nowadays, of course, both might well be regarded as offensive weapons by officers of the law. 

You might think that Desperate Dan wouldn't have a moment to spare for a visiting lady from Sussex, unless she were pie-shaped, but he obligingly halted in mid-stride so that I could take this picture with both of us in it:

There's a kind of Town Trail for statue-hunters. Dundee seems to be littered with them. The next one I want to write about has been plonked across some old tram lines. It's a slithery dragon.

I was surprised to see a dragon in the city streets of Dundee. You associate dragons with Wales, not Scotland. What was he doing here? It was hard to decide whether this creature was friendly or not, but I risked a shot with both of us in it, hoping he wouldn't bite me.

Not far off was another statue - two of them together in fact - celebrating (if that's the right word) the occasion when in 1878 an escaped polar bear rampaged through the main shopping street of Dundee, greatly exciting the good citizens, who had to run for their lives.  

Two observations here. First, the woman in the upper shot clearly isn't terrified. Very foolish! Second, if I were that man, I'd drop my roll of cloth and run like hell. Or bonk the bear on the beezer with it, and then run like hell. It's a funny thing, but people just won't do the sensible thing when danger threatens!

There were yet more statues. I'll close the post with this modern group of figures, presumably typifying the go-ahead, thrusting Dundee citizen of today. The artist has done a wonderful job. The figures are amazingly lifelike: