17/04/2025

YUPPIE FLEW

THE latest vestige of former glories the Telegraph has decided it can dispense with is the Alex cartoon strip by Charles Peattie and Russell Taylor, which had been running on the paper’s business pages for 33 years.

The yuppie turned city veteran and his wide cast of supporting characters had previously appeared in the Independent from 1987 to 1992, and originated in Robert Maxwell’s short-lived London Daily News.

The depressingly inevitable reason given for the strip’s termination was that it “didn’t get enough hits online”. But readers had long complained this was because it was hidden away on the website and hard to find. Managers at the paper had shown no enthusiasm for repeated offers to fold the authors’ own un-paywalled Alexcartoon.com website, with its comprehensive archive, into the paper’s own offering.

Fans have, however, deluged that website with “literally hundreds” of messages saying how sorry they are to see the strip go. In response last week the pair posted a message saying that: “Having to talk about one’s departure under the usual management euphemism of ‘we’ve mutually agreed to part company’ is one of those things nobody believes and we’re not going to say either.” They also assured readers that “Alex is definitely not retiring (or not for long anyway)” and Peattie confirmed to the Eye last week that “we’re talking to someone.”

With consummate timing, the Telegraph published its last ever Alex strip on Friday 4 April. When trading began again the following week, Donald Trump’s new tariff regime kicked off a global financial meltdown of the exact kind that had provided material for the strip, and made it a welcome bright point in the paper’s financial coverage, for decades.