Jackson: Bad news for Dennis The Menace fans

Sep 22 2008

WINSTON Churchill, Admiral Nelson, the Duke Of Wellington.

Titanic figures.

Captains of their own destinies.

Heroes, to a man.

Yet each one has been lambasted by revisionist historians, gleefully twisting their daring-do into daring-didn’t.

Now the reputation of another British champion has been hauled through the mud, as if it was nothing more than Walter Raleigh’s bedraggled cape.

Schoolboy rebel Dennis The Menace has been ordered to nix the naughtiness.

Euan Kerr, the former editor of The Beano, admits down-playing the aggressive antics of Dennis, fearing they made him appear intolerant of his arch enemy, Walter The Softy.

He was also nervous that Dennis’s actions could be deemed homophobic.

Frankly, I don’t get it.

Walter The Softy must be eight years-old and appears in a children’s comic. So I’d be deeply disturbed to learn that he enjoys any sort of sex life.

Which means he’s neither gay nor straight.

The only passionate affair he could possibly be inveigled in would involve a kinky threesome with his stamp collection and favourite teddy bear.

Aggression

Maybe Kerr concluded that because Walter is a knock-kneed weakling, he must be a bosom buddy of Graham Norton.

After all, every wishy-washy wimp is gay – and vice versa.

Now, that kind of argument IS homophobic. The truth is Walter is no victim. He’s every bit as aggressive as Dennis.

Although his sneaky method of gaining victory is cunningly concealed behind owlish spectacles and a spotted bow tie.

That’s called passive aggression.

Weakness is Walter’s warrior code, ensuring that he’s excused his heinous actions.

So don’t blame him for the tittle-tattle to teacher.

Or that cunning plot to dunk Dennis in a broiling broth of bother.

He’s a wimp, after all. None of it is his fault.

Clearly he’s a much less attractive character than his stripey-jumpered foe, who is more of a boisterous scamp than a genuine bully-boy.

And yet, for some inexplicable reason, most people would rather be Walter.

Ours is the generation that likes nothing better than to cower behind owlish spectacles and a spotted bow tie.

Why be valiant when you can be a victim?

Mike Ashley is a self-made billionaire, who made his cash from sports leisure wear.

Like a modern day Rumpelstiltstkin, he transformed the tatty threads of a pile of tracky bottoms into a glistening gold mine.

Then he bought his very own football club, Newcastle United, in the carefree manner that a young boy shells-out birthday money for a new Transformer.

Ashley – whose company Sports Direct International has its headquarters in the Midlands – is no wimp.

To forge a fortune out of little more than vaulting ambition, requires genuine backbone – a stegosaurus spine.

And more guts than regularly take part in the World Professional Darts Championship.

So Ashley must be proud to wear Dennis’s stripey-jumper of devil-may-care dynamism, right?

Wrong. Instead, he hankers after victimhood.

Now that his decisions at Newcastle have gone awry, and the supporters are outraged, he has decided to sell up.

Fair enough.

But he also chose to release a self-pitying letter, blubbing about the way he was flailed by fans.

Ashley should mop up those ickle tears with a thousand pound note, then get on with the business of being a man.

Focused aggression should be embraced. Another professional victim is Tarique Ghaffur, the police officer who claims he was racially discriminated against by the Met force.

Ghaffur, who was born in Uganda, rose rapidly to become one of the most senior officers in the country, with an annual salary of £180,000 a year.

Not only do I empathise with his outrage, I’m willing to relieve him of a hefty percentage of his terrible burden.

About £90,000 a year should ease the pain. Ashley and Ghaffur are merely the symptoms of a wider malaise. Vainglorious victimhood is everywhere.

It’s radical Muslims swaggering like medieval warlords one minute – then sniffling about civil rights and nasty Western soldiers the next.

Or big city bankers gambling with other people’s money, while hauling home bonuses as large as their egos.

Then shaking a begging bowl at the Government and demanding tax-payers’ cash to compensate them for their flash follies.

The march of the meek continues apace, while a chip on the shoulder is worn with all the pride of epaulettes.

Dennis and his red-and-black jumper have made way for a very different sort of stripe.

The yellow stripe of the craven coward.