Flook was a British comic strip which ran from 1949 to 1984 in the Daily Mail

Daily Mail

The Daily Mail is a British daily middle-market tabloid newspaper owned by the Daily Mail and General Trust. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982...

 newspaper. It was drawn by Wally Fawkes

Wally Fawkes

Wally Fawkes Wally Fawkes Wally Fawkes (born 1924 in Vancouver, Canada (left in 1931 for England) is a British-Canadian jazz clarinetist and, until recently, a satirical cartoonist...

 (of the jazz group Wally Fawkes and the Troglodytes), who signed the strips as "Trog".

It was the first newspaper comic strip to be published by the New Zealand newspaper Otago Daily Times

Otago Daily Times

The Otago Daily Times is a newspaper published by Allied Press Ltd in Dunedin, New Zealand.-History:Originally styled The Otago Daily Times, the ODT was first published on November 15, 1861. It is New Zealand's oldest surviving daily newspaper - Christchurch's The Press, six months older, was a...

, where it ran from 1952 to 1979.

Characters and story

The central characters were a young boy called Rufus and his animal friend, Flook. They inhabited a satirical

Satire

Satire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...

 and socially-perceptive fantasy

Fantasy

Fantasy is a genre of fiction that commonly uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting. Many works within the genre take place in imaginary worlds where magic is common...

 world populated by larger-than-life characters, mostly bearing a striking resemblance to leading politician

Politician

A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...

s and celebrities. Many of their adventures starred jailbird Bodger, his witch-like sister Lucretia (cf. Lucretia Borgia) and a mad retired colonel

Colonel

Colonel , abbreviated Col or COL, is a military rank of a senior commissioned officer. It or a corresponding rank exists in most armies and in many air forces; the naval equivalent rank is generally "Captain". It is also used in some police forces and other paramilitary rank structures...

.

Scripts

Storylines were written by the singer and writer George Melly

George Melly

Alan George Heywood Melly was an English jazz and blues singer, critic, writer and lecturer. From 1965 to 1973 he was a film and television critic for The Observer and lectured on art history, with an emphasis on surrealism.-Early life and career:He was born in Liverpool and was educated at Stowe...

, the comedian Barry Took

Barry Took

Barry Took was an English comedian, writer and television presenter. He is best remembered in the UK for his weekly role as presenter of Points of View, a BBC TV programme in which viewers' letters criticising or praising the BBC were broadcast...

, the musician Humphrey Lyttelton

Humphrey Lyttelton

Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton , also known as Humph, was an English jazz musician and broadcaster, and chairman of the BBC radio comedy programme I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue...

 and the film critic Barry Norman

Barry Norman

Barry Leslie Norman, CBE is a British novelist, impresario, film critic and media personality. He was the BBC film critic on television from 1972 to 1998.-Early life:...

.

The ironic and bohemian ethos of the strip was curiously at variance with the stuffy conservatism of the Daily Mail. In fact, Flook ran for a while at the opposite end of the British press's political spectrum

Political spectrum

A political spectrum is a way of modeling different political positions by placing them upon one or more geometric axes symbolizing independent political dimensions....

, since the Daily Mirror and Sunday Mirror

Sunday Mirror

The Sunday Mirror is the Sunday sister paper of the Daily Mirror. It began life in 1915 as the Sunday Pictorial and was renamed the Sunday Mirror in 1963. Trinity Mirror also owns The People...

 (diametrically opposed to the Mails right wing stance) also ran the strip on their cartoon pages for a few years.

Flook was also adopted as a mascot by 831 Squadron, Fleet Air Arm, and the character was painted on the squadron aircraft.

Books

• The Amazing Adventures of Rufus and Flook 1949
• Rufus and Flook v. Moses Maggot 1950
• Rufus and Flook at School 1951
• Flook 1958 (collection of three stories)
• Flook: Flook's Eye View of the Sixties, with an introduction by Laurie Lee, 1970 (collection of four stories)
• Flook and the Peasants' Revolt 1975
• Trog: Forty Graphic Years 1987 (features one complete “Flook” story)
• I, Flook: An Autobiography by George Melly, 1962 (not a strip collection)
• Trog at 30: A Celebration, Centre for the Study of Cartoons and Caricature, University of Kent at Canterbury, 1979 (catalogue accompanying an exhibit, with essays by most of the writers of “Flook” up to date)
• The Pataphysical Flook 2007 (an essay about Melly’s references to the works of Alfred Jarry
  Alfred Jarry
  Alfred Jarry was a French writer born in Laval, Mayenne, France, not far from the border of Brittany; he was of Breton descent on his mother's side....
  
  in Flook)