.
Thanks to the
‘Eagle-eyed’ David Gould for this item. In Volume 4 no.28 (October 16th
1953), a poem promoting the joys of Eagle,
beginning with the phrase ‘Grand was the day when Eagle came…’ appeared in the Eagle
Extra section. Written by a staff member, this poem reappeared in April
1958, sent in by a dishonest reader, who made a few minor updates, replacing Tommy Walls with Storm Nelson and PC 49 with
Mark Question. The plagiarist failed
to notice that the first letter of each line should read, downwards, ‘GOOD OLD
EAGLE’. His change to the final line made it read ‘GOOD OLD EAGLH’! Remarkably
this wasn’t the last time that the poem appeared. Another reader sent in his
own modified version in December 1967! This time the reader replaced Harris Tweed with The Iron Man, Storm Nelson with
Mike Lane and Mark Question with Grant
C.I.D. This reader realised that the letters down should read ‘GOOD OLD
EAGLE’, for he pointed it out at the end of the letter, leading me to suspect
that he adapted it from the 1953 original and not the 1958 copy. The two chancers in Eagle won
prizes of five and ten shillings, but their sins have found them out in the
end. Above is the original version from 1953.
David, who worked as a letterer on Eagle in the 1960s, reports that the weekly itself
was not averse to a little dishonesty in its later years, telling me that
several jokes were published with staff members’ or fictitious names. Shades of
Blue Peter’s notorious invention of a
competition winner here!
