IT'S enough to make Desperate Dan choke on his cow pie.
The Dandy has been accused of being racist by using a cartoon character which allegedly makes fun of the Irish.
Some readers of the comic in Ireland have claimed that the character, a leprechaun called Fiddle O'Diddle, was concocted by the Dandy to make the Irish look stupid and was a particularly insidious form of racism because it was targeted at children.
Dundee-based publishers DC Thomson were so concerned about the accusations that they sent Maurice Heggie, the comic's editor, to Dublin to appear on a radio show last week and defend Fiddle O'Diddle.
Mr Heggie told listeners to the Joe Duffy Livelive programme that Fiddle O'Diddle was his own ''madcap'' creation and was not intended to be racist.
Duffy interviewed a number of young Irish Dandy readers who all said they thought Fiddle O'Diddle was a good character, with some claiming he was better than even Desperate Dan.
Mr David Donaldson, the managing editor of DC Thomson's children's publications, yesterday stopped short of making comments like ''Jings, crivvens, help ma' boab'', but dismissed the row as a non-issue.
He said: ''Fiddle O'Diddle, like any character in our comics, should not be taken too seriously. Over the page, we feature a cat called Korky who drives a car and I don't think the level of humour used in Fiddle O'Diddle is any different from the Broons and Oor Wullie in the Sunday Post.
''They are obviously done in a kind of Scottish vernacular and like them, Fiddle O'Diddle is just a bit of fun, with no malice in it at all.
''Some people were complaining about the dialogue he uses but during the radio show a lot of Irish people were laughing and saying it was much ado about nothing.''
Mr Heggie added: ''I'm not having a go at the Irish people. Fiddle O'Diddle is just a mad-cap character.
''I don't think there is any nationality, be it Irish, Scottish, English, which is safe from being lampooned on our pages.''
He said there was no chance of the Dandy scrapping Fiddle O'Diddle because, until now, they had received no complaints about him.
''Like many comic publishers, we have had to stop doing things like illustrating punch-ups or corporal punishment because of political correctness, but I think doing away with Fiddle O'Diddle would be taking it a bit too far. Kids know the difference between the real world and the cartoon world.''
The Dandy has been in circulation since 1937 and sells about 100,000 copies weekly, compared to the Beano's 200,000. Both sell well in Ireland.
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