Colonel Blimp Colonel Blimp Colonel Blimp is a British cartoon character by cartoonist David Low, first drawn for Lord Beaverbrook's London "Evening Standard" in April 1934. Blimp is pompous, irascible, jingoistic, and stereotypically British, identifiable by his walrus moustache and the interjection "Gad, Sir!". Low claimed that he developed the character after overhearing two military men in a Turkish bath declare that cavalry officers should be entitled to wear their spurs inside tanks. The character was named after the barrage balloon, which was known as a blimp. Blimp issues proclamations from the Turkish bath, wrapped in his towel and brandishing some mundane
Evening Standard Associated Newspapers bought out the remaining stake, turning it into "The Standard". In 1987 the "Evening News" was briefly revived to compete with Robert Maxwell's "London Daily News", but was reabsorbed into "The Standard" later that year, after the collapse of Maxwell's paper. In 1988 the "Evening Standard" included the by-line "Incorporating the 'Evening News'", which remained until the paper's sale in 2009. On 21 January 2009, the Russian businessman and former KGB agent Alexander Lebedev and his son Evgeny Lebedev, owners of "The Independent", agreed to purchase control of the newspaper at £1 for 64 percent ownership. A few