I saw this story in the paper a week ago:

Which is refusing to post in clickable thumbnail mode 2025note: fixed it!

For anybody who can’t be bothered to scroll around the image, it is an article about a runner called John Tarrant who, throughout the 50’s, became infamous as “The Ghost Runner”. He had been banned from British amateur athletics tournaments (and, thus, Olympic selection) because he'd once been paid for a boxing match. In spite of this he would pop up at major events anyway, leaping the barriers to join a race just as it was starting. It sounds just like a story from a comic... In fact it sounds just like two stories from a comic! Possibly the most famous athletics stories ever written. Just look at this:

Does that remind you of anybody?

From The Hornet via the Great British Comics book

The one and only Wilson! This character first appeared in The Wizard in July 1943. The first story chronicled the story of this mysterious athlete, who became known when he leapt into a top-level race, until then a foregone conclusion, and trounced the field. From then onwards he would appear at events up and down the country, shattering records wherever he went!

As you may notice, the full title of the story is “The Truth About Wilson”, and what was this truth? It was the fact he was born in 1795, and had lived all those years thanks to a simple life living on the moors, sleeping in a cave and eating various herbal recipes that were actually the elixir of life! During the story, supposedly chronicled by the journalist W.S.K. Webb, and set during the 1938-39 season, Wilson would talk about old sporting records from the early 19th century. These were often only known in small villages, and were generally considered to be exaggerated local legends. Wilson would then break these “impossible” records, which had been set by similarly simple-living athletes whom Wilson had actually known!

The Wilson stories were initially “explained away” by the fact that they all took place just before World War 2, and so Wilson’s amazing records were “forgotten”, once war news overtook them. But DC Thomson had created a juggernaut, and couldn’t stop at just the one series. So Wilson, supposedly “last seen” in a burning spitfire over the Channel, returned to “seek champions” in the late 1940’s for Britian’s olympic efforts. After this he discovered a lost Ancient Greek civilisation in Africa and competed in their olympics, before going elsewhere in Africa to compete in a Zulu warlord’s “black olympics”.

Later on, Wilson made the transition from text stories to comic strips - first in The Hornet, moving (through the usual series of mergers), eventually, to The Victor. After disappearing for a while, Wilson reappeared in DC Thomson’s more “hard hitting” 1980’s comic Spike, this time as the mysterious “man in black”. While the story had been rewritten to play up the mystery, they were using the same artwork as the first Hornet serial. Many readers' dads spoiled the ending for them!

However, Wilson is not the only comic strip hero to defy the authorities and take to the track on his own terms. Over in The Rover a story called The Tough of the Track began in 1949. This featured Alf Tupper, a much more down to earth character who worked as a welder and ate cod n’ chips!

This could be Alf Tupper! (Except he did reach the Olympics eventually)

Alf, too, was thrown out of professional athletics. But his fault was to catch out an upper-class cheat, and then to be too quick with his fists.

Like Wilson, Alf Tupper began in text stories before transferring to comic strips, also ending up in The Victor.

Alf also decided to join in a race uninvited, and “ran ’em” all!

Alf also had a long life. He started in 1949, but I have issues of The Victor from the late 80’s where he’s still going strong – and there’s also stories of his apparent childhood which is clearly set in the 70’s! The ageing patterns only comic characters (and James Bond) can manage!

The final Alf Tupper story didn’t appear in a comic, but in a newspaper. It was 1992 and the Victor’s days were already numbered, the paper featured a short serialised strip showing how Alf made it to the Barcelona Olympics and “ran” the best athletes in the world to win gold!

Sadly Victor Tarrant didn’t have such a long life, dying at only 42 of stomach cancer. Like the comic strip stars he perhaps unknowingly emulated (mind you he was a working class lad in the 40’s, could he perhaps have had Wilson tucked away in his subconscious when he decided on his “pitch invasions”? We’ll never know) he was forgotten until a researcher stumbled upon his memoirs. They have finally been published as “The Ghost Runner” by Bill Jones. It is right and proper that such an unstoppable and eccentric character should be remembered. But what of the comic and story-paper versions? These tales entertained generations of readers for decades yet ask the average convention goer at Bristol and they won’t have a clue who you are on about. We have, in the words of Show of Hands, “lost more than we’ll ever know”.

Oi DCT, reprint this!