Template:Short description Template:Use dmy dates Alexander Steel Graham (2 March 1917 – 3 December 1991)[1] was a Scottish cartoonist who created the comic strip Fred Basset.
Biography
Alexander Steel Graham was born in Partick, Glasgow, and educated at Dumfries Academy.[1] He studied under William Hutchison at the Glasgow School of Art. During the war he served in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders, seeing action in Normandy - two of Graham's war drawings are in the collection of the Imperial War Museum in London. 'Wee Hughie' appeared in 1945 in D C Thomson's Weekly News and ran for twenty years. 'Briggs the Butler' became a fixture in Tatler. Graham drew regularly for Punch and had a series, 'The Eavesdropper,' in The New Yorker. He produced many collections of his cartoons, including 'Graham's Golf Club' and 'Daughter in the House'. Graham's best known creation, Fred Basset, is a comic strip about a thinking basset hound which began in the Daily Mail on 8 July 1963.[2] It has since been syndicated around the world.[2] [3]
He provided a series of humorous cartoons for the Gas Council's Sales Training Manual, mostly featuring a hapless salesman in his interactions with potential customer housewives.[4]
Graham died on 3 December 1991 in Ticehurst, East Sussex, aged 73.