Angus Og Revisited: Childhood, Thatcher, and a Highland Legend
There are some things you don’t realise are part of your emotional furniture until you trip over them again decades later. Angus Og is one of those for me.
Growing up, the Daily Record was the paper in our house. Mum and Dad read it cover to cover, every day, and we kids naturally gravitated to the cartoons first. Comic strips were our gateway drug into newspapers. Angus Og was just… there. Familiar. Absurd. Funny. I don’t remember anyone ever explaining him to me. He didn’t need explaining.
Earlier this year, walking into Inverness Museum, run by High Life Highland, and finding an Angus Og exhibition stopped me in my tracks. It was completely unexpected and utterly delightful. Cory had never come across Angus Og at all, which made the experience even richer for me. For him it was discovery. For me it was time travel.
I’d forgotten just how sharp those cartoons were. How politically astute, cheeky. How deeply rooted in Scotish and Highland and island life. And how many digs there were at Margaret Thatcher that landed squarely still.
It felt like my childhood, and Scotland itself, reflected back at me in pen and ink.
Who Was Ewen Bain, Really?
Until recently, I knew Angus Og far better than I knew his creator. Watching Learn with Lorna – Episode 176: Ewen Bain’s Angus Og changed that completely.
Ewen Bain was born in 1925 in Maryhill, Glasgow, the youngest child of Skye parents who never lost their connection to the island or the Gaelic language. Gaelic was spoken at home. Skye wasn’t just somewhere they visited; it was home in the deepest sense. Bain’s wife Sheila described those childhood summers travelling by train to Mallaig, then by steamer to Skye, as some of his happiest memories. Not a holiday. A homecoming.
That sense of belonging runs right through Angus Og. Drambeg (Utter Hebrides) may be fictional, but it’s emotionally precise.
Bain trained at Glasgow School of Art, joined the Royal Navy during the Second World War, then returned to art, teaching and eventually cartooning. Angus Og was born in 1955, the same year as Bain’s daughter Rona, initially as a way to supplement income when Sheila stopped teaching. There’s something very grounded and human about that. Angus wasn’t born from lofty artistic ambition; he was born from necessity, love and wit.
Wit, Language and Absolute Precision
What struck me most in revisiting Angus Og as an adult is Bain’s extraordinary use of language. This is where his genius really shines.
The dialogue isn’t just funny; it’s linguistically exact. The cadence of West Highland speech. The word order. The gentle formalities. The way humour is carried not just in what’s said, but how it’s said. “If yourself is agreeable.” “At all, at all.” These phrases don’t just decorate the cartoons; they are an extra layer in the cartoons.
Gaelic appears naturally, never self-consciously. Dialect words are trusted to carry their own meaning. Bain assumes intelligence in his reader. He doesn’t translate. He lets language do the work.
And then there are the names. Tonald. Tuggy. Sheumais. Dram. Even Mairileen, whose resemblance to Marilyn Monroe stops firmly at the name. Bain gently skewers pretension, authority and class divide simply by letting people speak.
These cartoons reward rereading in a way I’d probably missed as a child.
Political Bite Wrapped in Humour
Angus Og isn’t cosy nostalgia. It never was.
Landowners are ridiculed. Class gaps are exposed. Authority figures are gently but persistently undermined. The church, the police, politicians and landlords all come under scrutiny, often without even realising they’re the butt of the joke. The Lairds Prayer!!!
The Thatcher-era cartoons, in particular, feel astonishingly modern. Tourism pressures. Cultural erosion. Gaelic loss. Island economies squeezed and commodified. Bain was documenting this in real time, weekday by weekday, for nearly thirty years.
One of the great strengths of Angus Og is that it never punches down. The joke is on systems, power, ignorance and arrogance. Angus himself may be a schemer, but he’s never cruel. He’s recognisable. We all know an Angus.
Seeing the Originals: Why the Archive Matters
The Angus Og collection is now held by the Skye and Lochalsh Archive Centre, part of High Life Highland. Thanks to a remarkable donation by Bain’s daughter Rona in 2019, over 6,500 original cartoons, working notebooks (the wonderful “Og Logs”), drafts and overlays have been conserved, catalogued and digitised.
Seeing the originals matters. You can see Bain’s process. Pencil lines. Altered dialogue. Colour overlays added when the Daily Record went full colour in 1971. Editorial notes. Sometimes even text physically cut out and replaced when it pushed just a bit too far.
This isn’t just comic art. It’s social history. Political commentary. Linguistic record. And it’s being treated with the seriousness it deserves.
If you want to explore the collection online, these are excellent starting points:
- https://www.highlifehighland.com/skye-and-lochalsh-archive-centre/angus-og/
- https://www.angusog.scot/books
Why Angus Og Still Matters
What moved me most, both in the exhibition and is how relevant Angus Og still feels. These cartoons aren’t museum pieces in the dusty sense. They’re alive.
They open conversations about tourism, housing, language, power and community that are still playing out across Scotland and Highlands and Islands today. They invite laughter, but they also invite thought.
Angus Og stands comfortably alongside Asterix or Tintin in cultural weight, even if he never had their international reach.
Maybe now is his moment again.
Leaving with a Smile
Walking out of Inverness Museum that day, I realised how much joy I’d taken from rediscovering Angus Og. Not just the laughter, but the recognition. The sense of being seen. The understanding that someone had been paying close attention to Scottish and Highland life and turning it into something both affectionate and fearless.
Ewen Bain was funny, yes.
But he was also kind, observant, politically sharp and linguistically gifted. Angus Og is his legacy, and I’m very glad it’s being looked after, shared and celebrated properly.
If you grew up with Angus Og, I’d love to know what you remember most. And if you didn’t, I invite you to discover the pleasure of meeting him for the first time.
For more wee wild adventures Scotland
Burghead Well in Scotland: Mystery of the Ancient Underground Pool