Beano

It’s the end of an era. The country is slowly easing out of lockdown. Against the odds, we’ve delivered a show to the BBC and become surprising best mates with the Bank of England, and I’m leaving the Beano for new adventures.

Our brilliant Beano team adapted to lockdown at lightning speed, despite some becoming quite poorly with Covid-19 symptoms. We mobilised everyone to work from home early and we’ve kept all content production across TV, digital and the comic on track. Endless innovation, creativity and cheer has shone through.

Children are the canar­ies in the mine, picking things up first,” obser­ved Greg Childs, direc­tor of the Children’s Media Foundation, as he introduced an RTS debate on how children’s TV and content movers and shakers are adapting to the fact that young people have migrated online.

An optimistic tone was established from the start by Alice Webb, the out­ going head of BBC Children’s and Education, who asserted: “Yes, the kids are absolutely fine. They have more choice than they ever had. They are exercising choice and are after things that interest them.

"Slime is officially dead,” declares Emma Scott, CEO of Beano Studios. As the custodian of one of Britain’s most beloved brands, she is responsible for bringing the Beano brand into the 21st century.

The Beano comic is still profitable, she points out, although the 35,000 copies it sells each week are a far cry from the 2 million copies it sold during its heyday in the 1950s.