If you lived in Glasgow between 1949 and 1955, you would have had to have been blind and deaf and monumentally lacking in humour not to have known about Lobey Dosser. Lobey, the sheriff of Calton Creek, astride his faithful two-legged mare, El Fideldo, rode the comic strip ranges of Glasgow's Evening Times newspaper and he and his galaxy of enemies, friends and acquaintances – the major villain Rank Bajin (and, occasionally, his wife, Ima); Lobey's brother, Dunny; the Indians, Toffy Teeth and Rubber Lugs; the rancher, Whisk E. Glaur and his daughter, Adoda; Rid Skwerr and Fairy Nuff; Han O’ Gold; Watts Koakin; Stark Stairin; Roona and Nikka Boot; Fitz O’Coughin; and the Mexican bandit, Cortez Pantzonanale – became the subject of popular banter and their exploits lovingly retold in pub and school alike.

Lobey's adventures (and the life and other work of his creator, Bud Neill [1911–70]) are celebrated and explored in a film to be transmitted, later in the year, on Scottish Television (STV): Murray Grigor's A Wake for Bud Neill (1993). The film is a fitting culmination of a process spanning several years within which the genius and complexity of Bud Neill have been increasingly recognised. Part of that process was the erecting, by public subscription, of a statue of Lobey and Elfie (El Fideldo) in the West End of Glasgow and the tireless and loving research work of artist Ranald MacColl, who recently published five painstakingly reconstructed Lobey adventures under the title, Lobey's the Wee Boy!

There are two reasons why it is appropriate to discuss A Wake for Bud Neill in Scottish Film and Visual Arts. This journal has consistently called for an indigenous Scottish film and video industry, indigenous not only in the sense of being made in Scotland but also in being culturally rooted here. Bud Neill's work displayed this quality par excellence and Murray Grigor's film faithfully reflects it, making no concessions to that Scottish moving image lobby which argues that specifically Scottish material has to be ‘toned down’ for audiences outside of Scotland.

Neill's work was firmly rooted in working-class West of Scotland culture. The fact that the Lobey strips usually take place in the American West (although most characters speak in Glasgow dialect) is a source of comic disproportion.