Once upon a time, before the Perishers took shape and had their being in the pages of the Daily Mirror, there were Duffy and Drusilla.

They entered my head one day as I sat at my drawing board in Liverpool - inconveniently as it happens, I was trying to catch up on a pile of commercial artwork for advertisers: lay-outs, lettering and general illustrations.

I was doing alright until Duffy and Drusilla came along. They were so vivid my brain couldn't kick them out even if I'd wanted to.

Duffy was a boy who wore a miniature duffel coat - duffel coats were the "in" thing that season having spread from the trendier purlieus of Chelsea where no painter or poet would be seen dead without one.

Drusilla was Duffy's dog. She wore her own coat in contrast to Duffy's baby brother Gregory who sported an even smaller duffel wrapping.

These cartoon characters ( still unborn figments of my imagination ) romped around my daydreams demanding to be let out. The accouchement was painless. One day they just leapt out onto the drawing board, followed by a supporting cast called Serena and Humph.

I marshalled this instant gang into a dozen strip cartoons and headed for Fleet Street, hoping to sell them to a good home with a national newspaper. Worse things have happened to children….

Fate took my to the offices of the daily Mirror, where I showed my strips to the cartoon editor. I would like to report he signed up Duffy and Drusilla on the spot, he didn't.

Equally he didn't reject them out of hand. There was an interim period while they underwent remodelling on the drawing board. I like to think they were the inspiration and prototypes for what finally emerged as " The Perishers" with story-line supplied by Ben Witham, the strips first writer.

The Perishers began their long run with the Mirror in the pages of the Northern edition only, in 1958.

Before long Maurice Dodd was appointed writer, bringing new blood to the cartoon in the shapes of Old Boot, Baby Grumpling, Plain Jane, Fiscal, Kilroy, Beetle and Grub, BH Calcutta (failed), and Tatty Oldbit. Al of these did not appear at once. Bt October 1059 we were in the London edition, and in November 1966 we crossed the border to invade the Scottish Daily Mirror.

I am always being asked what experience is needed to become a strip cartoonist, a good question. Like vice and virtue, an ability to draw tends to show itself in childhood.

At home in Warwickshire at about the age of three, I can recall using the margins of my parents books on which to scribble little human figures - there seems to have been a shortage of paper in those days. Later I learned commercial art in a large studio, part of a processing house in Birmingham, studying also at Birmingham Art School. I moved on to my next job in Liverpool.

When World War II broke out there was the inevitable rush to fit square pegs into rounder holes of National Service.

I was relatively lucky, they put me on to reproducing maps for the Royal Engineers Survey, but for most of my service I was drawing for a branch of the War Office.

Shortly after demob, I started as a free-lance in advertising, having to turn my hand to everything from fashion to copywriting. Where I could, I found it came naturally to use humour in advertising, from which I branched out with my first strip.

I'm glad to say that the Perishers has multitudes of fans, ranging from submarine crews and Army units to a previous Lord Mayor of London who is nick-named Baby Grumpling by his family, ( he has a Perishers original on his wall ).

Duffy and Drusilla, are you listening? You never made it, but you certainly started something!