Alf Tupper

[5] Regarded as a "guttersnipe" by the posh blokes from the Amateur Athletic Association, he was at his best the day after a night on late shift, lifting heavy objects and getting little sleep.

Sometimes his tardiness was caused by skullduggery of the worst kind by "stuck-up" rich boys from a university somewhere, but usually it was because he could not stop himself from rescuing people in distress or just generally being a selfless chap.

Regardless of this, he always got there in the nick of time and, having just finished his fish and chips, went on to win the championships or even, in "end of series" stories, break the world record for the mile and utter his famous catchphrase "I ran 'em all!” Vic Whittle writes: Alf Tupper was 18 years of age when he first appeared in Rover in 1949 and he continued his adventures in Victor in the early 1960s.

The 1968 version of Alf (in The Victor Book for Boys) is a self-employed welder – "Welding done here" – and is still located under the railway arches in fictional Greystone, a drab town with cobbled streets, where heavy industry employs thousands of manual workers.

There was even a 'prequel' series about Alf's "rough tough boyhood" and his struggle with the authorities as an orphan (began in The Victor 0626 dated 17 February 1973).