Jimmy Allan

Jimmy Allan was born in Morayshire in 1912 and brought up in Elgin. Apart from a brief spell in the RAF during World War 2, Allan spent most of his life in the North East, moving to Aberdeen in 1952 when he married his wife, Connie.

Allan had a passion for acting and was on the verge of acting professionally prior to the outbreak of World War Two. He has left us with some colourful stories from his time as a Ground Station Wireless Operator in the RAF, detailing his theatrical exploits during the war. On returning to a civilian life, he continued with amateur theatre and worked, for a time at least, as a signwriter painting adverts onto buses.

He also loved to read and listen to the radio; he did not have a television. He also wrote many articles, many of which were read on BBC radio and one published in the Northern Scot.

From 1961, he worked for the Evening Express and became well known as the creator of “Allan’s Angles”. The first signed cartoon is on Friday 9 June 1961 and accompanies a regular feature called “The Lighter Side”, in this case about women drivers.

Other cartoonists’ work features throughout the Evening Express in the early 1960s (strips include Adam Ames, Ace O’Hara and Uncle Mac Strips, whilst signatures include JAK, Ward and Richard). Allan seems to have been assigned the illustration to accompany “The Lighter Side” and another series of articles “To my embarrassment” by JB Boothroyd at first. Gradually the number of cartoons he is drawing (mostly to accompany articles or regular features) increases until about 1963/1964 when he is given “Allan’s Angles” - a large feature cartoon of his own, 3/4 columns wide and generally on a Thursday. In the mid 1960s he seems to produce a similar sized cartoon to accompany the sports pages on a Saturday.

The first job of the day was the drawing of the “sportsmile”, which needed to be complete by 11 am for inclusion in the first edition of the afternoon paper. In Allan’s words “This small sports drawing would be child’s play if I weren’t so abysmally ignorant on the subject of sport.” He also drew crosswords, puzzles, title heading and illustrations but two “Allan’s Angles” were required each week - two large cartoons, one dealing with political and the other with local events.

He continued to work at Aberdeen Journals until his death in the early hours of 12 July 1971.

His daughter describes him as always seeing the funny side and that his biggest regret was never having a proper artist training.