Fred Basset is a comic strip about a male basset hound. The cartoon was created by Dumfries born cartoonist Alex Graham and published first in the Daily Mail on 8 July 1963.
Fred Basset first sauntered onto the pages of the Daily Mail in July 1963, and over more than half a century he has made himself a household name with readers all over the world. Nearly six decades after his debut, Fred and his friends continue to delight and entertain us with their trademark mix of wholesome humour, wry wit and shrewd observation. Their familiar faces and new adventures offer readers a source of comfort, contentment and amusement in our increasingly hectic, fast-paced world.
Fred Basset has been published in the United Kingdom newspaper Daily Mail, and latterly The Mail on Sunday, from 1963 to the present. Alex Graham based Fred on his own dog Frieda and drew over 9,000 comic strips.
Alex Graham was educated at Dumfries Academy. He then went on to study under William Hutchison at the Glasgow School of Art.
During the war Alex served in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, seeing action in Normandy – two of Graham’s war drawings are in the collection of the Imperial War Museum in London.
Alex Grahams cartoons including ‘Wee Hughie’ appeared in 1945 in D C Thomson’s Weekly News and ran for twenty years. ‘Briggs the Butler’ became a fixture in Tatler. Graham drew regularly for Punch and had a series, ‘The Eavesdropper,’ in The New Yorker.
He produced many collections of his cartoons, including ‘Graham’s Golf Club’ and ‘Daughter in the House’. Graham’s best known creation, Fred Basset, is a comic strip about a thinking basset hound which began in the Daily Mail 60 years ago today,on 8 July 1963. It has since been syndicated around the world.
Alex Graham died on 3 December 1991 (aged 73).
Information sourced from various online pages.
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