Comic-book baddie Dominic Cummings gets a bashing from the Beano

Some feel he was a menace of Dennis-style proportions in No 10 and few doubt he has the guile of Roger the Dodger.

So perhaps there’s no more fitting place for Dominic Cummings, after his dramatic exit from Downing Street clutching a cardboard box, than in the pages of The Beano. 

In the first pull-out section specially for grown-ups in its 82-year history, the kids’ comic lampoons Boris Johnson’s former special adviser for his infamous 520-mile round trip to County Durham.

In the eight-page BeanOLD inside today’s issue, Mr Cummings is depicted bemoaning the late arrival of Santa in Beanotown with the words: ‘It’s like he thinks the rules don’t apply to him!’ 

He is also shown clutching ‘directions to Barnard Castle’ as he is given the role as a getaway driver to Dennis the Menace’s enemy Wilbur Brown, the mayor of Beanotown and father of Walter the Softy, who is trying to steal all the Christmas presents.

They are foiled when police give Mr Cummings a ticket for driving without glasses. When he replies ‘I have contacts’, the policeman tells him: ‘I don’t care who you know, you’re still getting a ticket. This isn’t the first car crash you’ve been involved in this year – I remember your press conference from the Downing Street rose garden!’

In May, Mr Cummings was forced to justify publicly his decision during the first national lockdown to drive his wife and son from London to his parents’ farm near Durham after his wife experienced coronavirus symptoms and he had suspected symptoms. 

Towards the end of their stay, he made a trip to Barnard Castle, which he claimed was to test his eyesight ready for the drive back to London.

Mr Johnson features as a bumbling character helping Wilbur Brown, while NHS fundraiser Captain Sir Tom Moore and footballing school meals campaigner Marcus Rashford both visit Beanotown to receive honorary MBEs – Member of the Beano Elf-service.

Mike Stirling, head of Beano Studios, said the issue aims to give grown-ups a giggle because 2020 has been so tough. 

Mr Johnson and Mr Cummings were chosen to feature after the comic’s child ‘trend-setters’ – a team of young researchers – reported the pair were the second and third most talked-about figures in playgrounds, after Donald Trump.

A copy of the comic was sent to Downing Street for Mr Cummings, but Mr Stirling said he cannot be certain it reached him before he left on Friday ‘unless he managed to snaffle it out in his cardboard box… maybe the Prime Minister’s reading it now in his own lockdown’.