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Comic Cuts, Whizzer & Chips, Valiant, Tiger, Eagle and The Dandy; and to top them all, of course, The Beano, which at its height enjoyed sales of close to 2 million copies a week. The comics of our youth are part of the defining culture of post-war Britain until the dawn of the internet. So you can imagine the excitement when it was recently announced that a copy of the first ever Beano annual, from 1940 – although released in 1939 – was coming up for auction.

The annual from Dundee publishers DC Thomson set the tone for the decades to come, with larger than life characters getting into various scrapes amid an anarchic landscape.

None of the most famous characters appeared in the first weekly edition of The Beano, published in July 1938, except for Lord Snooty and his pals. Dennis the Menace and Gnasher did not appear until 1952, Minnie the Minx two years later and The Bash Street Kids a few months after that. Except for Dennis, all were created by the great Leo Baxendale, who died only last year, aged 86.

The Beano annual, expected to fetch £1200-1500, actually sold for £2700. I would be fascinated to see what an original Baxendale cartoon strip featuring Plug, Smiffy or Minnie would make today.