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One day in 1968 Ian McLaren, a writer at DC Thomson in Dundee, was on his lunch break with Ian Gray, who had developed the character of Dennis the Menace in The Beano with a third colleague, Ian Chisholm. Gray explained that they were working on a dog to accompany the tearaway schoolboy’s madcap adventures.
On the basis that people look like their pets, Gray had famously growled to the artist Davey Law: “You can draw Dennis’s hairstyle, can’t you? So put a leg on each corner and put two eyeballs at that end.”
Law’s illustration looked disconcertingly like an ink blot with human teeth, round ears and legs resembling the scraggly limbs of a pickpocket. However, they were all struggling to come up with a name for what was being termed a “black Abyssinian wire-haired tripe hound”. Gray was especially flummoxed. His own canine interests lay with “boxer dogs called Boris who would accompany him around Angus in his pick-up truck”, recalled McLaren’s son, Stuart.
Dennis’s long-running partnership with Gnasher was celebrated in a set of Royal Mail stamps
ROYAL MAIL/PA
As McLaren and Gray left their lunchtime café, they saw a woman with large teeth. “Look at her gnashers,” Gray muttered somewhat infelicitously. McLaren replied: “Gnashers! That’s what you should call the dog.” Back at their office, full of pipe-smoking men, the pair successfully persuaded their colleagues that Gnasher was indeed the right name.
He joined Dennis, who had been a staple of The Beano since 1951, on August 31, 1968, soon becoming known for his strong teeth, which could leave marks in anything including granite. He could “even make a dent in a British Rail sandwich”, as the folklore of the time had it. His favourite pastimes included terrorising Walter the Softy’s pet poodle, Foo Foo, devouring sausages and, to the dismay of the postal workers’ unions, sinking his teeth into the legs of passing postmen.
Gnasher was soon giving Dennis a run for his money in the popularity stakes and at various times had his own spin-off strips. His disappearance from The Beano in 1986 generated letters in the national press, though when he returned six weeks later it was with a litter of pups bearing names like Gnipper, Gnorah and Gnatasha. At its peak the Dennis the Menace fan club, including Gnasher’s Fang Club, had more than a million members.
The animated series Dennis and Gnasher appeared on BBC children’s television in 1996 followed by an updated version a decade later. In 2018, the Isle of Man produced Christmas stamps featuring Dennis and Gnasher, and three years ago Gnasher was seen on the Royal Mail’s Dennis the Menace 70th anniversary stamps.
McLaren rose to become editor of Mandy, the girls’ magazine, and enjoyed country walks in his retirement
Ironically, while the widely read and erudite McLaren spent more than 40 years working on DC Thomson’s children’s titles, he only worked briefly on the Beano, writing the Roger the Dodger strip in the late 1950s. Instead, he contributed to titles such as The Victor, Bunty and Judy and ended up as editor of Mandy, which was published between 1967 and 1991, though he freely admitted to being distinctly unqualified for writing for girls’ comics.
Ian Alexander McLaren, was born in Dundee in 1936, the son of Fred McLaren, a headmaster and occasional poet, and his wife Alice (née West), who died when he was young; his younger brother, Peter, was a police officer in Hong Kong and died in the 1970s. They were raised in the old South School schoolhouse in Forfar by their father, an occasional contributor to the Forfar Dispatch who encouraged his sons’ interest in reading.
At 14 McLaren, already a fan of children’s comics, wrote to DC Thomson inquiring about work. In a diary entry he recorded with evident delight his success: “Got one! Office junior on Adventure [his favourite title] for £3 a week. Couldn’t believe my luck!”
In the mid-1950s he was called up for National Service with the Royal Navy, serving for five months on the minesweeper HMS Laertes and then on the destroyer HMS Cockade in the seas around Hong Kong and Singapore. He was the resident love-letter writer, turning out elegant prose to his fellow sailors’ girlfriends in exchange for their rum rations. On demobilisation he returned to DC Thomson.
Ian McLaren married Irene Bowman in 1960
McLaren was a keen tennis player and met Irene Bowman through their membership of Forfar Tennis Club. They were married in 1960, later settling in Letham, in Angus. Irene survives him with their children Susan, a former travel agent; Peter, who teaches English in Saudi Arabia; and Stuart, who teaches and plays drums. Stuart recalled his father often bringing home free comics for them.
Like all media, comics move with the times, often abruptly. Corporal Clott, an early staple of the Beano’s sister publication The Dandy, did not long survive National Service; Lord Snooty and his Eton collar disappeared from The Beano in 1991, victims of class prejudice; and Little Plum, a Native American boy, vanished from The Dandy in 1994. Dennis (by 2017 no longer the Menace) and Gnasher lived on, adapting their behaviour to contemporary mores while retaining the anarchic naughtiness that is familiar to anyone under ten.
McLaren, a man of dry wit, was a lifelong supporter of Forfar Athletic FC. He retired in 1993, giving him time to enjoy long country walks and trips to the beach with his own dogs — none of which were black Abyssinian wire-haired tripe hounds called Gnasher.
Ian McLaren, writer and editor of children’s comics, was born on October 20, 1926. He died on July 10, 2024, aged 87
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