Dougal

Origin

Dougal is a large Skye terrier dog with a world-weary attitude only lifted when he gets hold of sugar lumps, which he enjoys with a verve verging on addiction. He and his friends, Zebedee (a jack-in-the-box), Brian (a snail), Ermintrude (a cow), Dylan (a rabbit), and Florence (a girl), live near and hang out together in the vicinity of a merry-go-round (the Magic Roundabout) run by Mr. Rusty.

Creation

Created by Serge Danot, The Magic Roundabout is a children’s stop-motion animation television series that ran from 1964 to 1971. The BBC bought it from France’s national televison and radio production agency Office de Radiodiffusion-Télévision Française (ORTF), but the contract did not include scripts, and rather than pay for those and translate them, the BBC hired Eric Thompson (Emma Thompson’s father) to write new scripts based purely on the episodes’ visuals, without knowing what the original dialogue or storylines were, instead figuring out a narrative using just the visuals. Eric Thompson also narrated the English versions.

In the original French version, Dougal was called Pollux. There was some controversey in France upon learning of the character’s new British name, with some people assuming that the large nosed dog had been named in parody of French war hero and former President Charles de Gaulle. When the Magic Roundabout was turned into a CGI movie in 2005, singer Robbie Williams provided Dougal’s voice. The film was renamed Doogal for US release and re-dubbed, with the voice of “Doogal” provided by Jimmy Fallon.

The Magic Roundabout and its characters made the transition to comics in 1966 when Hamlyn began publishing annuals based on the series. The annuals were released each year throughout the 1970s, and then intermittently in the 1980s and 1990s. Dougal got his own annual series from 1969 through 1974, as well as appearing in several illustrated books. Overlapping the annuals, the Magic Roundabout also began appearing in Playhour during the 1970s.