He was born in Wandsworth, South London, on 13 June 1913, the son of Frank Birnage, editor of the conservative evangelical newspaper the Sunday Companion, and was educated at Sutton Valence School in Kent.
He then left to write children's stories for rival publisher Amex, but quit after only four months to run a toy shop in Bexhill with his wife, Audrey Waterman,[2] whom he had married in 1946, and her parents.
[1] In 1954 Birnage launched a new sports-themed comic, Tiger, and asked writer Frank S. Pepper to create a more realistic football strip than The Champion's Danny of the Dazzlers.
[4] After Colquhoun left in 1959, Birnage wrote the strip himself, using the pseudonym Frank Winsor,[5] when not ghost-writing for the credited writer, Bobby Charlton.
[1] After jobs in publishing, planning, and the Department of Health and Social Security, Birnage retired to Burgess Hill, West Sussex, where he died on 18 January 2004, survived by his wife and their three children.