Bristow (cartoon)
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Bristow is a character in a popular British strip cartoon.
Since 1962, Bristow has been drawn by the cartoonist Frank Dickens, and until 2001 appeared in the London Evening Standard newspaper. The strip was widely syndicated. The cartoons follow the daily life of a buying clerk who works in the monolithic Chester-Perry building. He is a fantasist and has delusions of grandeur, wishing he were a brain surgeon and a writer. His epic tome Living Death in the Buying Department has yet to find a publisher, but he is not discouraged. He lives in a small bedsit in East Winchley and commutes to work by train, invariably arriving late. Bristow is surrounded by co-workers, Fudge (his overbearing manager), Jones, Hewitt, Dimkins, Miss Sunman, master chef Gordon Blue, the Postboy (Elvis Boggis) and the tealadies. Bristow has a crush on routine visitor Miss Pretty of 'Kleenaphone'. Another regular visitor is the pigeon who sits on a window ledge. During the Winter, the bird travels to a warmer climate where she visits Bristow's counterpart, a black man in a white suit. Bristow invariably holidays at a beach resort known as Funboys Sur La Plage.
Bristow was made into a BBC Radio 4 series starring the late Michael Williams. It has also been turned into a play several times.
Frank Dickens is often credited for "inventing" a cartoon device whereby he wrote the words of the action next to the character, such as "flinch flinch", as he was unable to draw expressions well enough to fit in the comic strip boxes.
