Whatever happened to What-a-mess?

Creative chaos ... What-a-mess

Frank Muir, the popular comedian and radio presenter who died in 1998, kept Afghan hounds as well as cats. From these tall, elegant, recherché creatures, he drew the inspiration for a character who delighted me when I was just old enough to read alone - the Afghan puppy Prince Amir of Kinjan.

Despite his breed, Prince Amir is a small, fat, bumbling chap, invariably coated in something sticky, his moulting fur festooned with twigs and leaves. He is eccentric in his habits, forever poking his long pink snout where it doesn't belong; people leaning over the garden gate may notice "a shapeless bundle of muddy fur doing something peculiar, like eating a tree or trying to dig a hole in a puddle". Their reaction is invariably one of horror and disgust: "'What's that?'...'WHAT A MESS!'" Under Joseph Wright's delicately coloured, minutely detailed and distinctly hallucinogenic drawings of the puppy having a barked altercation with some birds he has disturbed during his arboreal snack, Muir comments darkly: "It is not surprising, then, that the puppy grew up believing that his name was What-a-mess."

As if onomastic uncertainty were not enough, What-a-mess is also plagued by philosophical anxiety of the deepest and most perturbing kind - not only does he not know who he is, he does not know what he is. His mother, a sleek, lovely, golden Afghan, "was kind as well as beautiful. She told him all sorts of things that a growing puppy should know ... But his mother did not tell him quite everything. She forgot to tell him that he was a puppy."

Deciding to find his true self, What-a-mess models himself on the shortest, fattest things he encounters - a bee, a hat, and a fish - collecting a jab from a hatpin, a coatful of compost and a cold in the head along the way before retreating to the basket wherein he usually ends his ill-advised adventures.

The What-a-mess books are as funny and delightful today as they were when I examined each page closely for Wright's surreal little people - aliens kicking broken-down spaceships, tiny blue sheep investigating bathrooms - while I slowly deciphered the intriguing and hilarious text. Prince Amir always has the best of intentions - in What-a-mess the Good, he is anxious to be voted "World Champion Best-Behaved Dog (Small, Fat, Afghan Puppy Class) at Crufts" - but he is a very young puppy, not very clever, and much too credulous when it comes to the evil machinations of the cat-next-door, a slinky Siamese.

He also has a puppy's overwhelming interest in food and sleep (What-a-mess Has Lunch opens with the baldly truthful statement, "A hungry puppy is a sad sight".) The apocalyptic, but happily short-lived, disasters which result when one of What-a-mess's grand plans falls victim to sabotage, incompetence or simple hunger are still nicely calculated to make very young children gasp in delighted horror - it's sad that this generation won't get the chance to enjoy Muir and Wright's horrendous hound.

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