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Bristow's Colleagues | |||
Some other colleagues |
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Benny "the Duke" Gibson and the Chester-Perry Rat Pack A bunch of hell-raisers, terrors of the
canteen, the Rat Pack are the Chester-Perry equivalent of the Dreaded
Hulines. Led by Benny "the Duke" Gibson, a man who wears
a natty bow-tie and sports a cigarette-holder, they drink at lunchtime,
whistle at passers-by and do the daredevil things that many clerks can
only dream about. Bristow incurs their displeasure by sitting in a seat
in the canteen that the Rat Pack regard as their own territory strip
3423
They seek him out in his office and threaten that they will not leave.
When Bristow retorts that he will have to fetch Fudge
the Rat Pack capitulate.
Sadly we hear no more of Mr Gibson but the Rat Pack seems to have survived him. Bristow himself is cited as having been a member in 1985 (during a period when they were taking anybody) (from strip 1070 on Frank Dickens website in June 2005). Clearly standards have slipped. Ratcliffe: (poking head round door of Buying Department)
Is Mr. Falconer in? Possibly not working in the most suitable department
for his particular talents, Mr. Ratcliffe seems to have fundamental
difficulties in working out where he is, what he is doing and why. He
gets lost in the Chester-Perry building - though he certainly tries
to rectify this - strip
2553
- and it is foolish of him to challenge Bristow on the subject
strip 2555
And outside the firm, Ratcliffe seems to be on no firmer ground strip
2035
.
The firm’s pathological liar. When he arrives, sporting a glowing tan and boasting of foreign holidays, everyone automatically assumes he has a sun ray machine in his front room. Just after he announces a huge pools win, someone asks if anyone has picked up a pound they dropped in the corridor. One of the firm's top salesmen, he demonstrates
his superb sales technique to Bristow. Other salesmen may bore their
customer by telling tired old jokes but Mr. Gabby can do so to such
an effect that, as his victims nod off, he can gently manipulate their
hands to sign a sales order strip
2706
. Like his colleague Sampson, Mr.
Gabby is partial to a little drink - or perhaps more than a little,
as Sampson's wise precautions in strip
3063
suggest. Although it is a little odd that Mr. Gabby appears not to know
the location of the pub, the Brolly and Bowler. It is after all pretty
well a second home to the alcohol-crazed sales staff.
Muscles Maddox the firm's bully A cross between Flashman* and Daley Thompson**, Maddox
is the curse of the corridors. His temper and appetite for violence,
coupled with size and fitness, make him unique amongst the timid clerks
that populate the C-P building. His methods, when crossed, are brutal
and direct strip
2321
. And when he is moved to work on the floor below the Buying Department
and insists on absolute silence, Bristow is caught in an interesting
dilemma seen in strip
2682
But he can be a most useful travelling companion, as Bristow finds out
in strip
2745
, though as on this occasion Maddox had thought he was travelling with
the firm's karate expert, the conviviality did not last long and a spell
in the broom cupboard was required - strip
2747
Maddox fades out soon after the broom cupboard incident. Maybe the humiliation of losing to Bruiser Downs of Myles & Rudge in the interfirm boxing championship was too much to take. However he makes a final cameo appearance at the Christmas Dinner and Dance of 1992 where, seated next to Bristow, he is able to eat and drink his fill at his companion's expense. *Flashman was the school bully in Thomas Hughes' Tom Brown's Schooldays and then the hero of a series of comic novels by George Macdonald Fraser **Thompson (no relation to Toady Thompson), was Olympic Decathlon champion in 1980 and 1984 Poor Mr Meeke. Whatever his real job may be, his lot
is to be the permanent victim, forever taking the blame for the misdeeds
of others, waiting patiently at his desk for the next accuser to spring
from the woodwork. The first time we encounter him he is fingered by
Mr Tracer as being the culprit in the sinister
Bread-roll throwing incident at the dinner and dance (though we know
who it really was), When Bristow loses the manuscript of Living
Death in the Buying Department - no matter, Mr. Meeke is on hand
to write out 750 odd pages - strip
2788
and if anyone has a bad day and needs to get it out their system, then
they just go and give Mr. Meeke a slap or two.
Bristow encounters Mr. Tupper one day at a car boot sale. Mr. Tupper is selling large quantities of office stationery. 'Nuff said. (By the way wasn't there a character in boy's comics in the 1950s called Alf Tupper, the Tough of the Track? Can they possibly be related?) Each spring a fat and lazy pigeon migrates
to the Northern Hemisphere and homes in on the window ledge outside
Bristow’s office. Bristow feeds it and pampers it, even putting out
little bells and ladders for it to play with. He guards it from the
much more cynical Jones "Hmm, don’t like
the look of these teacakes this morning ...here birdie". The pigeon
is so regular an attendee and takes such an interest in the affairs
of the department that Bristow places it in the pecking order for Chief
Buyer ahead of Jones strip
4663
. (Which is why the pigeon is listed amongst Bristow’s colleagues)
We first meet the pigeon in early 1963.
Bristow seems hostile to it at first - strip
610
. But within a few weeks he is putting out crumbs, and feels strangely
drawn to it. For, as he confesses whilst feeding it in the park, "we
have something in common. We neither of us know where the next meal
is coming from". He doesn't know much about birds and muses whether,
if it is a carrier pigeon, he could strap a message to its leg - "Help
I am a prisoner in a buying department".
The pigeon must be one of the least air-worthy
creature to fly. When Bristow tours the top floor of the C-P building
he has to encourage the bird to make it up from the street below. When
migrating back from abroad, only the sound of Fudge screaming abuse
at Bristow keeps it and its friends on course. Whilst in the park the
pigeon (and friends) are so unfazed by the oncoming park-keeper that
- well see for yourself. But it can
certainly make itself useful strip
4146
The last strip published in the Evening Standard, strip
10939
, features the pigeon.
Fascinatingly, each autumn the pigeon heads south and lands on the ledge of, not so much a black Bristow but an inverse Bristow, a black man with a brushy white moustache and a white suit who greets it affectionately "Well if it ain’t ma lil feathered friend". Since the voice off is instructing Wotsirb to "Get on wid de work" we seem to be in Alan Coren’s Uganda. I wonder what would happen if a message were to be strapped to the pigeon's leg. It might lead to an interesting, if very protracted, correspondence.
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