Beryl the Peril 1967

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In this strip, she is enjoying the Dandy swimming pool alongside other famous past Dandy characters. The strips were similar in concept to the Dennis the Menace ones in that she would cause chaos through menacing her neighbours, parents and school teachers. It was fabulous fun and touring in your own bus and being given the privilege of expressing yourself and being paid for, who could ask for anything better? Nicola Lane’s posters for The Perils and comic book style programmes helped give The Perils their strong identity. C. Thomson's characters to earn an annual all to herself, consisting solely from reprints in past years.

This formation resulted in controversy when Denise and Reb both became pregnant and [would have had difficulty in participating in a planned European tour] were reluctantly asked to leave]. Personal appraisal and thoughts: ‘…we were radical and we were very scared, we didn’t know we were radical and didn’t know we had anything to say. Notably, she was the only Beezer and Topper character to transfer to The Dandy as soon as the former comic folded. We were breaking new ground with Operation Beryl and we’re all sorry that this is not the show we took to the Assembly Rooms, then the story would different.

From The Dandy issue dated 3 March 2006, Steve Bright took over Beryl as artist and her appearance reverted to how she had been drawn by David Law She went through another costume change – a baggy green and red T-shirt with baggy black jeans and trainers.

After a break the original Perils, Claudia, Christine and Didi reformed to create Dead or Alive, which included material about Greenham Common and Chernobyl and the environment. In 1999, the strip was taken over by Ollie Fliptrik artist Karl Dixon as Nixon had to go into semi-retirement due to health problems. As revealed in The Dandy dated 3 March 2006, Steve Bright had taken over Beryl as artist and she had now reverted to how she was drawn by David Law, and had gone through another costume change - a baggy green and red T-shirt with baggy black jeans and trainers. In the David Law strips, she is quite mischievous but also fun-loving and rather clumsy, whereas she became a more malicious character after John Dallas took over.She reverted to her black and red clothes and her hairstyle became much more like that of Dennis the Menace – but her pigtails remained.

The director has described the working process as ‘people in tears then (turning) trauma to humour’.Reason: The founders were: ‘Very, very unhappy [and] frustrated’ with the number of women on stage and the roles for women and…the initial impetus was to redress the balance and to put [their] stories on stage. This causes a chain effect in which other famous characters from The Dandy – including Korky the Cat, Desperate Dan and Bananaman – also unfriend her father, much to his dismay. In the Karl Dixon stories, she shows little respect to her father, often referring to him as 'Beak-Boy' due to his abnormally large nose.