Gnasher is one of the most famous dogs in Britain. That chaotic shock of hair, that grin. I could be describing the dog or his master - they share those attributes.

Beano stars Dennis and Gnasher are a gift to the screenprinter, from a graphic point of view, with Dennis's red-and-white sriped jersey and explosion of black hair.

Gnasher seems to be made of the same kind of thing as Dennis's hair – the untamed explosion of black somehow symbolic of the chaos they embody. 

Dennis become a kind of national mascot – what Asterix is to France, or Oor Wullie is to Scotland.

Incidentally, The Beano is the longest running British comic. It first appeared on 30 July 1938, and is still published every week. 

Dennis, the star of The Beano comic, first appeared in 1951. Dennis has gone through various phases since he first appeared, from the pocket-sized Satan of the 1950s, to the pugnacious youth of the 1960s and 1970s to the incorrigible imp of the 1990s. In the early 1960s, he was joined by his Abyssinian wire-haired tripe house, Gnasher. 

The Beano is of course also home to those other icons of British children's comic humour Minnie The Minx, The Bash Street Kids and Roger The Dodger.

Incidentally, the word beano is apparently short for "bean-feast" and means a feast, a celebration and a good time.