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Oor Wullie is a comic strip, set in Scotland, in the D. C. Thomson & Co. Ltd newspaper The Sunday Post. It features a boy named William ('Wullie' - Oor Wullie is Our Willie in Scots) whose trademarks are spiky hair, dungarees and sitting on an upturned bucket - indeed, the strip has started and ended with a single frame featuring Wullie on his bucket since early 1937. The earliest strips always ended with Wullie complaining 'I nivver get ony fun roond here!' and featured very little dialogue, with the artistic style settling down by 1940 and changing little since. A frequent tag-line reads "Oor Wullie! Your Wullie! A'body's Wullie!". Created by cartoonist Dudley D. Watkins (1907-1969), the strip first appeared in the issue dated 8 March 1936. Watkins continued to draw it until his death, after which the Sunday Post recycled his work into the 1970s, when he was succeeded by Ken H. Harrison, followed in 1995 by the current artist Peter Davidson. The storylines are now written by broadcaster Tom Morton, from his home in Shetland. Wullie's home town is an amalgam of Dundee and Glasgow, unnamed in the Watkins strips, but called Auchenshoogle since the late 1990s. His adventures consist mostly of get-rich-quick schemes and getting up to mischief, to the despair of his parents Ma and Pa (Dave), and the local policeman, P.C. Murdoch. His friends are Fat Boab, Wee Eck (Eng: Little Alec), and Soapy Soutar, and he is the leader of their gang, a position which is frequently disputed by the others. He used to have another friend called Ezzy who stopped appearing in the strips, along with Wullie's wee (little) brother. He owns a pet mouse named Jeemy, and in later years has gained a Highland Terrier named Harry, and a "sometime-girlfriend", Primrose Patterson. Characters from The Broons occasionally feature, particularly Granpaw. Wullie's age is indeterminate, but his height has been specified at 4 feet 6 inches tall. His catch phrases consit of "Jings", "Crivvens" and "Help ma Boab". The Oor Wullie strips are presented in a bi-annual with every other year being given over to The Broons. A series of compilation albums have been published over the years featuring The Broons and Oor Wullie on alternate pages. William Ross, Secretary of State for Scotland 1964 - 1970 & 1970 - 1974, was occasionally depicted in political cartoons seated on a bucket as Oor Wullie.
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