And not forgetting....
Benny "the Duke" Gibson and the Chester-Perry Rat Pack
A bunch of hell-raisers, terrors of the canteen, the Rat Pack are the clerical equivalent of skinheads. Led by Benny "the Duke" Gibson, a man who wears a natty bow-tie and sports a cigarette-holder, they drink at lunchtime, whistle at passers-by and do the daredevil things that many clerks can only dream about. Bristow incurs their displeasure by sitting in a seat in the canteen that the Rat Pack regard as their own territory strip 3423. They seek him out in his office and threaten that they will not leave. When Bristow retorts that he will have to fetch Fudge the Rat Pack capitulate. Sadly we hear no more of them.
The firm’s pathological liar. When he arrives, sporting a glowing tan and boasting of foreign holidays, everyone automatically assumes he has a sun ray machine in his front room. Just after he announces a huge pools win, someone asks if anyone has picked up a pound they dropped in the corridor.
One of the firm's top salesmen, he demonstrates his superb sales technique to Bristow. Other salesmen may bore their customer by telling tired old jokes but Mr. Gabby can do so to such an effect that, as his victims nod off, he can gently manipulate their hands to sign a sales order strip 2706.
Mr. Tracer, the firm's sleuth, may be found on extension 221B. He is equipped with magnifying glass and meerschaum pipe and is the obvious person to call in when your cushion has been stolen. He is not the world's most successful detective - in fact to be blunt he ranks amongst the world's worst but his uncanny knack of pinpointing suspects "To begin with we assume everyone in the building is guilty" must surely yield results one day.
Bristow encounters Mr. Tupper one day at a car boot sale. Mr. Tupper is selling large quantities of office stationery. 'Nuff said. (By the way wasn't there a character in boy's comics in the 1950s called Alf Tupper, the Tough of the Track? Can they possibly be related?)
Each spring a fat and lazy pigeon migrates to the Northern Hemisphere and homes in on the window ledge outside Bristow’s office. Bristow feeds it and pampers it, even putting out little bells and ladders for it to play with. He guards it from the much more cynical Jones "Hmm, don’t like the look of these teacakes this morning ...here birdie". The pigeon is so regular an attendee and takes such an interest in the affairs of the department that Bristow places it in the pecking order for Chief Buyer ahead of Jones strip 4663. (Which is why the pigeon is listed amongst Bristow’s colleagues)
We first meet the pigeon in January 1963. Bristow seems hostile to it at first...
Surprise surprise
There is a little stranger on my window ledge
He waves his arms to scare it away
Cats..maiow cats
As the pigeon takes off in alarm, Bristow pens a letter
Dear Sir, Today I heard the first cuckoo.
strip 610
But within a few weeks he is putting out crumbs, and feels strangely drawn to it. For, as he confesses whilst feeding it in the park, "we have something in common. We neither of us know where the next meal is coming from". He doesn't know much about birds and muses whether, if it is a carrier pigeon, he could strap a message to its leg - "Help I am a prisoner in a buying department".
The pigeon must be one of the least air-worthy creature to fly. When Bristow tours the top floor of the C-P building he has to encourage the bird to make it up from the street below. When migrating back from abroad, only the sound of Fudge screaming abuse at Bristow keeps it and its friends on course. Whilst in the park the pigeon (and friends) are so unfazed by the oncoming park-keeper that - well see for yourself. But it can certainly make itself useful strip 4146
Fascinatingly,
each autumn it heads south and lands on the ledge of, not so much a black
Bristow, but an inverse Bristow, a black man in a white suit who greets
it affectionately "Well if it ain’t ma lil feathered friend".
Since the voice off is instructing Wotsirb to "Get on wid de work"
we seem to be in Alan Coren’s Uganda. I wonder what would happen if a
message were to be strapped to the pigeon's leg. It might lead to an interesting,
if very protracted, correspondence.
The last strip published in the Evening Standard, strip 10939, features the pigeon.