Briggs the butler

Alex Graham was a Scottish cartoonist and the creator of the well-known basset hound 'Fred Basset'. Born Alexander Steel Graham in Patrick, Glasgow, he studied at Dumfries Academy and served in the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders during World War II. After the war, he began selling cartoons to magazines like The New Yorker, Punch and Women's Journal. One of his 1953 cartoons for The New Yorker is presumably the origin of the catchphrase "Take me to your leader", that has been associated with extraterrestrials in films, comics and cartoons since. He joined DC Thomson's Dundee Weekly News, and created a comic strip called 'Wee Hughie' in 1945. Graham continued this feature throughout the 1950s and 1960s. In 1946, Graham created another comic for the paper, 'Our Bill'. A year later, he was present in the Sunday Graphic with 'Willy Nilly', and for 17 years, he made 'Briggs the Buttler' in Tatler Weekly. He was also the author of 'Graham's Golf Club' in Punch. On July 9, 1963, Graham began the comic strip with which he was most closely associated: 'Fred Basset', about a basset hound. Originally appearing in the Daily Mail, the strip eventually found its way to foreign publications through the Tribune Media Services. After Graham's death in 1991, the strip kept on appearing in reruns for eighteen months until Michael Martin took over in cooperation with Graham's daughter Arra