As its mischief-maker-in-chief, Dennis the Menace caused chaos across the pages of Britain’s best-loved comic. For generations, his favourite target was Walter the Softie, the effete, bespectacled boy who preferred picking flowers and holding tea parties for his teddy bears to pea-shooters or catapults.

That was until modern sensibilities finally caught up with the red-and-black-striped tyke.

Now, the former editor of the Beano has revealed how he toned down the torment of Walter the Softie – for fear that Dennis would be accused of “gay-bashing”.

Euan Kerr, who edited the children’s comic between 1984 and 2006, admitted that he took some of the menace out of Dennis in the late 1980s.

“I definitely felt a sense of responsibility in making sure the characters did nothing that was easily imitable,” he told The Times.

“The evidence is that kids understand a comic is a comic and that it isn’t anything like real life. But the relationship between Dennis and Walter was always one that worried me.”

Executives at D. C. Thomson & Co, publishers of the Beano, decided that the victimisation of Walter could be interpreted as offensive.

Mr Kerr said: “We decided the best way to approach it was to make sure that, even though he and Dennis didn’t get along, Walter was completely happy about who he was and a confident, likeable character in his own right.

“We eventually gave Walter a girlfriend too, as a measure to combat any further criticism.”

He added: “The comic has certainly changed over the years. For example, every strip used to end with the rogue of the piece being punished in some way – usually a smack across the head or a slipper across the bottom. This sort of corporal punishment became outdated and eventually it was phased out.”

The move to bring Dennis the Menace’s behaviour into line with modern attitudes is only one of many changes to the Beano, a comic whose original masthead in 1938 did, after all, feature a caricature of a smiling African boy by the name of Peanut, with a bunch of bananas protruding from the pocket of his tattered trousers.

However, Mr Kerr argues that the panic over political correctness has not taken the edge off the antiestablishment roots of the comic, and there are already indications that the balance is slowly turning against PC culture.

For example, the Beanorecently ran a strip entitled The Neds, chronicling the misadventures of a work-shy family, including characters called Asbo and Chavette.

Mr Kerr added: “Luckily for us, I think there is a real resistance to the overt political correctness creeping into British life and the Beano can hopefully use this to its advantage.”

John Midgeley, the co-founder of the Campaign Against Political Correctness, said: “It’s a great shame that in recent years this national institution has been watered-down to placate a tiny minority of humourless, do-gooding adults.”

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