Basil Brush very aggressive Scottish hedgehog also made by Peter Firmin. In the mid-1960s Basil became a supporting act for the magician David Nixon, upstaging Nixon on the latter's BBC1 show "Nixon at Nine-Five" in 1967 and "The Nixon Line" (1967–68), to such good effect that the fox was offered his own show. Basil thus acquired his own television series on the BBC, "The Basil Brush Show", which ran for 12 years from 1968 until 1980, in which he was supported by various famous stooges: first, in 1968, by the actor Rodney Bewes, known on the show as "Mr Rodney"; next, from
Mandrake the Magician Mandrake the Magician Mandrake the Magician was a syndicated newspaper comic strip, created by Lee Falk (before he created "The Phantom"). "Mandrake" began publication on June 11, 1934. Phil Davis soon took over as the strip's illustrator, while Falk continued to script. The strip is distributed by King Features Syndicate. Mandrake, along with the Phantom Magician in Mel Graff's "The Adventures of Patsy", are regarded by comics historians as the first superheroes of comics. Comics historian Don Markstein writes, "Some people say Mandrake the Magician, who started in 1934, was comics' first superhero." Davis worked on the strip until his