An Irishman's Diary

There is a certain poignancy to the news that Billy Bunter is 100 years old. Had he ever really lived, it is highly unlikely he would have troubled Buckingham Palace for a centenarian's cheque.

But as a comic book creation, he never had to suffer for his arteries. Born in 1908 at an almost fully-formed 15, he achieved instant immortality without ever ageing a day.

His fame now is such that even people who never read a Greyfriars adventure know who he is, or at least are familiar with his chief physical characteristic. As recently as last week, on the cusp of his centenary, newspapers reported the discovery of "Billy Bunter genes", said to predispose their hosts to gain weight. If only the "Fat Owl of the Remove" had known about these 100 years ago, so much misunderstanding might have been avoided.

The counter argument to the Bunter gene theory, incidentally, is that if the DNA was there all along, the obesity epidemic should not be spiking so dramatically now. According to the latest figures, 67 per cent of Bunter's modern-day fellow countrymen are classified as overweight, up from 59 per cent since 1993; and more than a million people are on anti-obesity prescription drugs, an eight-fold increase in a decade.

The responses range from concern to controlled panic. British health officials are even considering cash-incentive schemes or vouchers to encourage weight loss. Which sounds a bit desperate - although Bunter, who was always cadging off others while waiting for his father's postal order to arrive, might well have been amenable to such tactics.

The obesity epidemic would surely have impinged on the Greyfriars stories were they still being written. In fact, the authors would probably have had to abandon both the golden rules identified by George Orwell in his 1940 essay on boys' weeklies, which argued that insofar as the "penny dreadfuls" had any world view, they were conservative with a small "c". "Their basic political assumptions are two," Orwell wrote. "Nothing ever changes, and foreigners are funny."

Although he was no fan of the Greyfriars stories, which ran for up to 20,000 words each, padded out with Bunteresque portions of tautology, Orwell marvelled at the popularity the main character had achieved, viz: "For the mere number of people who know him he ranks with Sexton Blake, Tarzan, Sherlock Holmes, and a handful of characters in Dickens." It's curious, therefore, that in that great barometer of 20th-century taste and opinion - the Irish Times Archive - Billy Bunter does not make his first appearance until 1947, and then only as the name of a second-prize winner (owned by Ms A.E. Hall, Portadown) in the Dublin Horse Show "Heavyweight cobs and ponies" competition.

This may be more of a comment on the pre-war Irish Times than on Bunter's place in popular culture. But that Greyfriars had a strong influence here is evident from one of Billy's subsequent archive appearances, in Myles na Gopaleen's Cruiskeen Lawn. The particular column lamented the Irish schoolboy's traditional dependence on English comics and affected to welcome the arrival - in 1949 - of an indigenous version called The Irish Merrymaker.

Unfortunately, the welcome becomes distinctly hollow as Myles quotes extracts from the new publication. "Crikey! Those are our chaps," exclaims one character, on seeing a fight between boys in a posh school and local roughs. "They're being pounded to bits by those council school cads," the same character continues. Other examples - "presumably delivered in a Kerry accent", as Myles suggests - include: "Hard cheese, old chap." "Here, wot's this?" (asked by a policeman referred to as a "copper"). And "Blowed if the joker isn't Tommy Tomlinson himself! Well, I never."

If he turned up in a modern English-school comic, Billy Bunter would be a candidate for arrest of one kind or another. Probably cardiac. But given his institutionalised racism, the possibility that the paddy wagon might get to him before the ambulance could not be ignored either. Or then again, the writers might opt for a dramatic plot twist in which Billy conquered his suspicion of foreigners, emigrated to Japan, and became a champion Sumo wrestler.

This intriguing possibility is suggested by reports that the Japanese national sport is in crisis. In an ironic echo of the West's obesity problem, Sumo is experiencing a sharp decline in the number of applicants - although, according to the Financial Times, this is not necessarily because of a healthier diet. It's more the case that for many young Japanese, the money and prestige offered by a successful wrestling career is no longer sufficient to offset the harsh discipline of the life.

One result is that at a time when Irish and British racehorse trainers are importing overseas jockeys because there are not enough indigenous recruits with the required lack of physique, Japanese Sumo stables are importing overseas heavyweights, who increasingly dominate the sport.

A side-effect is that the traditions of Sumo, such as the ban on wearing Western clothes (now that we're making sizes big enough to fit them) in public, are also in decline. Much soul-searching has ensued; and as the FT notes, "the success of supposedly 'hungrier' wrestlers from poorer countries has inflamed the debate". I'm nearly certain the pun was not intended.