Bully Beef and Chips

Bully Beef and Chips were fictional characters who had their own strip in the UK comic The Dandy. It started in the 1960s and originally continued until 1997. The strip told the story of two warring boys - a tall, ugly thug called Bully Beef and a softer, more cunning lad called Chips. The name "Bully Beef and Chips" comes from a quickly-prepared meal &mdash; corned beef and chips &mdash; with "Bully beef" being a phrase used for "corned beef".

Stories of these two were identically themed - Bully Beef (Beefy) would constantly play violent tricks on Chips, who would then get his climactic revenge in some way right at the end. Originally, Bully Beef's eyes were always covered up by his hair, but towards the end of the 1980s they became partly visible, and then entirely visible when original artist Jimmy Hughes retired and was replaced by Gordon Bell and later Sid Burgon. Burgon changed the characters' personalities a little, and made Chips just as much of a jerk as Beefy at times, occasionally resulting in Beefy coming out on top. It was revived in 2009 in Dandy Xtreme, drawn by Wayne Thompson, but this didn't last long. After a redesign, they reappeared, again drawn by Thompson, in May 2012. Beefy had made an appearance in both The Beano and The Beano Annual earlier in 2009 - specifically in a reprint Fred's Bed strip from around 1992, where Fred visited both Beanotown and Dandytown, and Beefy was among several characters he met. The annual appearance was in the Reservoir Dodge story, as one of a gang of villains watching Baby Face Finlayson attempt to drown Roger the Dodger, Walter the Softy, Minnie the Minx, Billy Whizz and Calamity James. The strip also appeared in both the 2011 and 2012 Dandy annuals, the 2011 one was drawn by an unknown artist who's style resembled Jimmy Hughes's, and 2012 was drawn by Laura Howell. The strip has been parodied in Viz as Biffa Bacon.