Crime writer Ian Rankin has told how The Beano was his “gateway drug” for reading.
Rankin, 60, whose Rebus novels are bestsellers, grew up in a house with barely any books but used to read The Beano and The Dandy.
He described comics as “affordable literacy for kids” and said writing was like “playing with his imaginary friends” but joked that if he’d achieved success in his 20s it would have been baths filled with champagne and gold-plated pinball machines.
Rankin said: “Comics were a few pennies and for a few pennies you’d be reading a story that would keep you occupied for a while and you could swap them with your friends.
"We didn’t have many books in the house but I was allowed to indulge my hunger for comics and I’d get seven or eight a week.
“It was the Dandy and the Beano, the Victor and the Hotspur, then later it was 2000 AD. I’m still a huge fan of comic books.
"It’s a gateway drug to novels and a gateway drug to storytelling.”
He said he hid his enthusiasm for writing to avoid being seen as “weird” in his hometown of Cardenden, Fife, adding: “When I started writing in my early teens, it was in stolen school jotters.”
