COMIC cartoonist Leo Cheney will be turning in his grave.

The monocled dandy who has made Johnnie Walker whisky famous throughout the world since the turn of the century is literally losing face.

Foreigners apparently think he is too snooty so the famous Striding Man who has graced bottles of the hard stuff for 90 years is to shed his monocle and gloves.

What would Accrington-born Cheney have thought? After all, for a decade he was the artist responsible for drawing the character.

Leo, a former Accrington Grammar School pupil, took over work on the cartoon figure at the outbreak of the First World War.

Originally, the figure had been created by Tom Browne on the back of a menu. His inspiration was supposedly George Peterson Walker, the whisky blender.

When Leo took over there had been two artists, each stamping their own interpretation on the character. He gradually modified the rather rakish figure into a "rounder and more sociable character."

The Striding Man was taken through the war years in a series of jingoistic advertisements.

Later Cheney portrayed him walking, driving cars, sailing and even canoeing. The advertisements appeared in the Illustrated London News between 1915 and 1919 and also in Punch.

The character appeared in sequences of adverts, including The Travel Series, the Old Craft Series, the Literary Series and the Historical Spirit series.

But despite being an ambassador for the famous drink for almost a century, United Distillers have decided to give him a facelift.

He is now becoming faceless and a shadow of his former self.

A portrait of Cheney still hangs in Accrington Library. He used to send cricket sketches to the Accrington Observer before moving onto to the Manchester Evening News.

He went to live in Essex where he died in 1928.

Another man who put Accrington on the map was Robert Tasker. Actually born in Whalley in 1812, he invented and built the first mangle - or the geared wooden roller wet clothes wringing machine, as it was called

This year Taskers, who now sell home furnishings at Queen Mill, Queens Road, Accrington, celebrate their centenary and have the original wringer in their showrooms.

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