Just William and his gang of outlaws got up to all sorts of mischief, always with hilarious consequences... We look back on nearly 100 years of the cheekiest boy in children’s fiction.

A beige crumpled mac, creased shirt, ruffled hair, foul-smelling cigar and a basset hound called Dog. It doesn’t take a Sherlock to work out we’re talking about the ever popular TV detective Columbo