By Frank Muir & Joseph Wright (Carousel, Picture Corgi)
ISBNs: 0-552-52105-I (Carousel)Â Â Â Â Â 978-0-55252-105-5 (Corgi)
Once a hugely popular franchise, the subtly superb and wryly fantastic adventures of What-a-Mess have all but disappeared from today’s library lists and Athenaeum book-shelves. Written by Frank Muir and illustrated by Joseph Wright, the gloriously engaging, dolorously delightful yarns starred a philosophically trenchant, galumphing great ugly-duckling dog and spawned 22 further books, in assorted styles and formats, as well as two seasons (48 episodes in total between 1990 and 1995) of a successful trans-Atlantic TV cartoon series.
Joseph Wright is still a brilliant but enigmatic jobbing illustrator who generally keeps to himself and lets his wonderfully manic art do his talking for him. He is most well known these days as the provider of hilariously gory perfectly perfidious pictures for the Little Dracula series of books by Martin Waddell – a task he toiled at from 1986 onwards and which again resulted in a fondly remembered American cartoon series.
Frank Herbert Muir was born on February 5th 1920 inRamsgate,Kent and spent the next 77 years of his life becoming a British entertainment legend. His formative years were spent in his grandmother’s pub, before moving toLondon.
Despite possessing an astounding vocabulary, phenomenally disciplined, cultured diction and a plummy, posh voice, Muir was educated atChathamHouseGrammar SchoolandLeytonCountyHigh Schoolfor Boys, not the public-school system he so miraculously mimicked. He proudly and often averred “I was educated in E10, notEtonâ€â€¦
During WWII he served as a photographic technician in the Royal Air Force and when demobbed began writing radio scripts for comedians Jimmy Edwards and Dick Bentley. This led to his teaming with life-long writing partner Denis Norden, and their creation of the venerable comedy show Take it from Here reinvented the Funny Business. Their first major innovation was the invention of iconic sitcom family The Glums, and the team quickly became a keystone and shaper of British humour (…for instance, they originally coined the much-beloved phrase “Infamy, Infamy, they’ve all got it in for meâ€) so when Edwards moved over to the new-fangled television medium Muir & Norden went with him…
Scriptwriter, satirist, scholar, author, performer, star of Radio and Television, Muir was also the BBC’s Assistant Head of Light Entertainment during the 1960s and followed up by becoming London Weekend Television’s first Head of Entertainment in 1969, and worked constantly and brilliantly in his many careers until his death on January 2nd 1998. Ten months later, he and Norden were joint recipients of their last of so many honours: the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain Writer of the Year Award for 1998.
Muir and his family shared their home with a succession of Burmese cats and Afghan Hounds, and these latter were the inspiration for the simply magical picture book story featured here.
Prince Amir of Kinjan was a very clumsy and confused puppy. Excitable, inquisitive, rash and so very careless, the long-nosed, long-legged, pot-bellied pooch always hurtled from here to there, rolling in things, overturning objects and generally causing a sticky calamity all over the place.
There were always things trapped in, nastily glued to or even growing on him – and usually a small yellow duck stuck to the crusted fringe on his head. Even his serene, gracious and long-suffering mother so often said “What-a-Mess!†that the mucky moppet actually believed that it was his name…
No wonder the dire doggy was so confused and pondered – whenever he wasn’t rushing about, tearing furniture or eating something he shouldn’t – over what kind of beast he actually was…
This resplendent riot of frolicsome folderol then follows the scruffy scamp as he searches in the house, garden and pond for his true identity and a meaning to his life. Using observation, logical deduction and rationalist reasoning, the daft beast notes his definite physical similarities to a big fat bee, an expensive haute couture hat and a goldfish, earning the consequent ire of assorted humans, a compost heap, gravity and merciless, short-tempered ducks …
Even when, at the end of a particularly trying day – for all concerned – the pooped pup slinks home to mother and she tells him what he truly is, Prince Amir still gets a firm hold of the wrong end of the stick…
A lost classic of very clever kids’ comedy, Muir’s tale rattles along, combining delectable irony with empathy and surreal slapstick whilst Wright’s astonishingly busy illustrations convey pathos and naifish enthusiasm and idiocy with glib ease. Moreover every colourful conception is additionally crammed with deliciously bizarre background detail: madcap marginals, surreal sidebars and outrageous off-focus action involving a host of animals and far less natural characters…
Bright, brash, beautiful and brilliant, these books are a sublime treat and long overdue for a fresh release in today’s wonder-starved world.
Text © 1977 Frank Muir. Illustrations © 1977 Joseph Wright.