Steve English with his ‘Tartan Bucket’

Steve English has just been awarded the first Tartan Bucket Prize (named in honour of famous Scottish comics character Oor Wullie) organised by Dundee University in conjunction with D C Thomson.

The aim of the competition was to design a cartoon character and story that would be suitable for the likes of weekly print comics Beano and Dandy.

Steve’s winning entry, Belle’s Magic Mobile, will feature in the Beano in January 2012.

“It’s about a girl with a magic mobile phone that she gets from her grandad who looks suspiciously like Alexander Graham Bell,” Steve tells us. “I’m hoping there’s lots of scope for follow up stories. I’m madly inking some new stories to show the Beano, but time will only tell if they see it that way too.

“They’re going to publish it in January,” he reveals. “Chris Murray, the guy who organised the Dundee Comic Day, has said he would probably put an exhibition together for that time too.”

Some readers may recall Steve also won the ROK Comics cartoon competition back in 2007, which had the then editor of The Beano as its external judge.

In addition to his competition success, Steve’s football humour strip Football Earth now features in two more publications, She Kicks published by Baltic Publications and Farnborough OBG matchday programme.

His crazy Madd Science is one of three creator-owned iPhone apps available from ROK Comics.

The tartan on that ‘Tartan Bucket’, by the way, is the officially registered Oor Wullie tartan . The Broons tartan, strangely enough, is more brown.