As cartoon strips go, “Fred Basset” is, shall we say, sedate. They harken back to a gentler time when comics didn’t have the political bite of Doonesbury, or the darkness of a Far Side cartoon (though we thought Gary Larson’s cartoons were wicked funny).  The comic strip created in 1963 by the Scottish cartoonist, Alex Graham, was a bit remarkable because Graham, himself, not only didn’t own a dog, but was a bit fuzzy on just what a Basset Hound even looked like. Yikes.

Graham had been asked by the editor of the Daily Mail newspaper to create a cartoon strip about a ‘thinking dog.’ Graham settled on a Basset Hound because, as he put it, “they were a unique type of dog with rather expressive faces.”

His “doglessness” didn’t last long. Fan mail from early readers inspired the Daily Mail to give Graham his own Basset puppy, a little lass named “Freda”who would help him capture the breed’s essence. As a Basset Hound is apt to do, “Freda’ wormed her way into Graham’s life, and the pair became inseparable. When Graham drew in his studio, Freda watched. When he golfed in the afternoons, Freda followed him from tee to tee. When he nursed his evening whiskey in a comfy armchair, Freda curled up at his feet.

When “Freda” died over a decade later, a devastated Graham was compelled to fill the void with another Basset, “Freda 2.” Over time, Graham drew “Freda 2” so often that in short order, he could draw “cartoon Fred” in four seconds flat.  The core of the Fred Basset cartoons was the main character – Fred – providing wry commentary on the goings-on of the humans around him.

There is always concern that when a popular movie or animated feature includes a purebred dog, there will be a “run” on the breed. Who ever thought that a cartoon strip might do the same? Within the first few years of “Basset Fred’s “birth,” the Kennel Club reported a six-fold increase in Basset registrations.

Sadly, Alex Graham died in 1991 a month after being diagnosed with cancer. An 18 months worth of cartoons was stockpiled, but after them, Fred Basset’s future was uncertain. Concern among fans proved to be short-lived; Graham’s daughter, Arran, stepped up to provide the words for the strip while Michael Martin, a British artist in France, provided the drawings. The strip remains syndicated.