Oor Wullie

Oor Wullie (English: Our Willie) is a Scottish comic strip published in the D.C. Thomson newspaper The Sunday Post. It features a character called Wullie, the familiar Scots nickname for boys named William. Oor Wullie means Our Willie. His trademarks are spiky hair, dungarees and an upturned bucket, which he often uses as a seat - most strips since early 1937 begin and end with a single panel of Wullie sitting on his bucket. The earliest strips, with little dialogue, ended with Wullie complaining ("I nivver get ony fun roond here!"). The artistic style settled down by 1940 and has changed little since. A frequent tagline reads, "Oor Wullie! Your Wullie! A'body's Wullie!" (Our Willie! Your Willie! Everybody's Willie!).

Created by Thomson editor R. D. Low and drawn by cartoonist Dudley D. Watkins, the strip first appeared on 8 March 1936. Watkins continued to draw Oor Wullie until his death in 1969, after which the Post recycled his work into the 1970s. New strips were eventually commissioned from Tom Lavery, followed by Peter Davidson and Robert Nixon. Ken H. Harrison drew the strip from 1989 until 1997, when Davidson resumed duties. Between January 2005 and 2006 storylines were written by broadcaster Tom Morton from his home in Shetland, and subsequently they were written by Dave Donaldson, managing director of Thomson's comics division. The current writer is former Dandy editor Morris Heggie.

Though it has been claimed on the internet that Wullie's full name is William MacCallum, this name - or any surname at all - has never appeared in any of the strips in The Sunday Post. While his home town was unnamed in the original Watkins strips, it has been called Auchenshoogle since the late 1990s.

Wullie and his friends roam the streets of his town, though he is sometimes depicted at school which he finds confining. Praise from his teacher, who addresses him as "William", is rare and acutely embarrassing. His adventures consist mostly of unrealistic get-rich-quick schemes that lead to mischief, to the despair of his parents Ma and Pa (Dave) and local policeman P.C. Joe Murdoch. Wullie's gang consists of himself, Fat Bob, (Eng: Little Alex), Soapy Joe (AKA Soutar /ˈsoʊtər/) and Primrose Paterson (an annoying girl who likes Wullie, but who Wullie often does not want to be in the gang, yet manages to be much better than him in various games and activities such as football, racing, climbing trees and firing a catapult). Wullie is the self-proclaimed leader, a position which is frequently disputed by the others. In early strips the gang met in a wooden shed - usually located in the garden at Wullie's house. In later strips the gang meets in a derelict caravan called Holly Rude. He used to have another friend called Ezzy, who has stopped appearing in the strips, along with Wullie's unnamed little brother. He owns a pet mouse named Jeemy and in later strips a pet dog called Harry. In the Ken Harrison strips he gained additional supporting characters, such as the pretty Doris Gow (who Wullie likes much to Primrose's rage), her boyfriend, the town bully Basher McKenzie, and grumpy old neighbour Moaning Mildew (modelled on Victor Meldrew from One Foot in the Grave.)

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