Father Ted Creator Graham Linehan speaks to Newstalk’s Breakfast on the demise of the comic

Father Ted creator Graham Linehan has expressed his sadness at the proposed closure of the British comic ‘The Dandy’ and said that he is just as ‘inspired by comics as he is by film and TV’.

Speaking to Newstalk’s Breakfast, Linehan said that he had prepared himself for the demise of the comic, because “as a parent, when you go into  a newsagents to look for reading material for kids, there’s nothing there except for tie in’s to television shows and cartoons”.

The writer says that he thinks that comics are an incredible way of getting kids into reading and making them realise than there is more to reading than the “agreed canon of literature”.  He also that that children can find their own personality and individuality in the pages if comics and “it’s a real shame that they’re gone”.

The funny man spoke of his own love for comic books, admitting to still reading them as an adult. He told Breakfast how Friday’s would turn into the most exciting day of the week when he and his father would have ‘sweets and comics day’. He would read classics such as Bullet, Warlord, Buster, Whizzer and Chips and says that it makes his heart beat faster when he thinks of sending away to become a member of the Bullet Club, as it was the first thing he ever received in the post.

Linehan is not saddened by our technological advancements, saying that the level of connectivity that we all have now is one of the “greatest things that’s happened to the human race, but, after a while, the pleasure of sitting down with something tactile like a 40 page comic, will be missed and people will gradually realise that there is something to be said for these old fashioned modes of narrative”.