AT FIRST glance, it looks like any old leather suitcase.
Well-travelled, a bit worse for wear, and a little too old-fashioned, perhaps, for today’s holidaymakers - which is why Ross and Sam Porter nearly threw it out when they discovered it in their loft.
“It was heading for the skip,” says Ross, with a smile.
“And then we spotted the name, engraved in the leather. We didn’t know who he was, but we searched it up on the internet and we were absolutely amazed to discover who it belonged to.”
The name was Bud Neill, one of Scotland’s greatest cartoonists and creator of famous sheriff Lobey Dosser.
He started at the Glasgow Evening Times in 1944, and Lobey and his two-legged horse El Fideldo debuted in the newspaper five years later.
He was also famous for ‘wee wifie’ cartoons, discussing everything from their weans (“it’s his teeth, aye, awfy crabbit - like a bear wi’ nae fags”) to holidays ‘doon the watter’ on Clyde steamers. (A famous one featured the ladies irritating a smartly dressed man in a yachting blazer and officer’s cap by quizzing him: “Yaffayat? Whityatyaffa?”
Ten years and 3000 cartoons later, Bud was interviewed for the newspaper and admitted he had been astonished when his first cartoon had appeared, and again when another one was published a couple of days later.
“Come to think of it,” he wrote, “I have been living in an almost perpetual state of astonishment since then….”
At the height of his career, Neill was a megastar, earning a massive £1000 a week in the 1950s and 60s.
Lobey Dosser was the sheriff of Calton Creek, in the wild west of Arizona. Glaswegians loved Bud’s tales of Lobey and his arch-enemy, Rank Bajin and after Bud’s death in 1970, his creations achieved cult status around the world.
A statue of Lobey, Rank and El Fideldo was unveiled in Woodlands Road in 1992.
Ross and Sam knew none of this when they first found the suitcase, tucked away in a corner of their loft in Dunfermline.
“We have lived in this house for 10 years,” says Ross.
READ MORE: Remembering the cartoonist behind Lobey Dosser
“I was up in the attic recently because we had a bit of a leak, and I noticed the suitcase – we’d never seen it before.
“There was nothing inside, but when we looked it over we noticed the name and wondered if it was worth looking up.
“We were absolutely amazed to find out Bud Neill was a famous Glasgow cartoonist and known throughout the world.”
He adds: “There’s a sticker on it too, with the name William Neill, and details of a journey he’d taken on a ship called the Laurentia – the Donaldson Atlantic line – in August 1951.
“We have no idea how the suitcase ended up in our loft – there is no connection to the house, as far as we know.”
Can any Times Past reader help?
Articles in our archives reveal Bud did live in Dunfermline at one point, although not in the Porters’ house and he spent some time in Canada.
“We’d love for the suitcase to go to Bud’s family or into a museum or exhibition in Glasgow,” adds Ross.
“It feels like a little piece of history.”
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