The Broons triplets? Eagle-eyed fan spots an extra brother in vintage annual

Margaret Webster had to do not just a double, but a triple-take, while leafing through a vintage Broons annual.

The eagle-eyed gran-to-be was stunned when she saw three Glebe Street ‘twins’ featured in a busy family garden scene.

She spotted that in one frame there is an extra twin – one in the birdbath, another at the gate and one hiding behind Daphne.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Margaret, 61, said. “I noticed that there was triplets, not just twins, drawn into the cartoon.

“I have been a Broons fan since childhood and it is the first time I have come across anything like this.”

Margaret, from Huntly, Aberdeenshire, was given the 1964 annual last year as a gift from her brother.

She said: “I used to be a graphic technician and was inspired into the job by the late Broons artist Dudley D Watkins.

“His work is so clever and funny and all these years later I still laugh out loud when reading about the antics of the Broons.

“I have no idea why he would draw an extra twin into the garden scene. Perhaps he was playing a little joke.”

Cartoon legend Dudley’s comic strip drawings of Oor Wullie and The Broons appeared in The Sunday Post from 1936 until his death in 1969.

He also illustrated for comics such as The Beano, The Dandy, The Beezer and Topper.

Margaret later noticed that in a Broons compilation annual she has and which was published 1970s, the third “twin” had been removed from the scene.

Gordon Tait, heritage brands and licensing editor at DC Thomson, said he had no knowledge of a third twin featuring in any other Broons.

He said: “Perhaps the third boy is actually Oor Wullie, who had disguised himself as one of the twins for a joke.”