Jolyon Wagg

Debut: The Calculus Affair

It was not easy to find the right name for the representative of Rock Bottom Insurance, a name which on its own is both an embarassment and a portrait of the character. In the original French version he is called Lampion, a name which means literally a fairylight or Chinese lantern.

"I needed something puffed up, which sounded like an expression of both the bouncy and spineless sides of his character. I first of all thought of Crampon, but that was too explicit and too hard. Lampion appeared to me to be right." (From Numa Sadoul's Interviews with Hergé).

Of all the human types thought up by Hergé, Wagg is certainly the most realistic and the most contemporary. He is the perfect picture of a vulgar chap, an archetypal bore.

"He exists in thousands of examples: a typical Brussels type - and not only Brussels - who is smug and self-satisfied. They are exported in great numbers! During the holidays, they descend in tightly knit hordes on foreign countries. One generally recognises the type by the fact that he wears a belt and braces at the same time.... It was some time ago that I found my model for Lampion: during the war, when I lived in Boitsfort, I received a visit from a character who wanted to sell me I no longer know what. He took a seat and, pointing out my chair, said: "Please take a pew!" The unwelcome visitor in all his glory!"

Wagg loves company above all else, which is the prime cause of Hergé's hostility towards him. When he is not with his family, this impossible man is at the centre of a group. He organises rallies for his village motor club, the Vagabond Car Club, of which he is of course the president. He takes all the way to San Theodoros a party of the roisterous "Jolly Follies", carnival revellers whose costumes he has, needless to say, designed. Wagg knows about everything, there is not a hobby he does not have, but there is above all one art in which he is a past master: that of getting in your way at the very moment you least want to bump into him.