Internet users logging on to the world’s biggest search engine site would have had an unexpectedly happy surprise yesterday – a tribute to Cleckheaton-born Mr Men creator Roger Hargreaves.

Google’s front-page logo was transformed into a series of randomly-generated “doodles” celebrating Mr Hargreaves’ much-loved children’s book characters.

Long-time favourites such as Mr Messy scrawled all over the familiar Google logo, Mr Tickle hid behind a bush, and accident-prone Mr Bump all but wrecked the rainbow letters.

There were 16 doodles in all, featuring his Mr Men and Little Misses characters, and visitors to the site got a different one every time they logged on or refreshed the page.

The tribute was in honour of what would have been Mr Hargreaves’ 76th birthday – he died in 1988, long before the internet was a daily feature of life as it is today.

Mr Hargreaves was born in Cleckheaton in 1935. He worked in advertising, but hit children’s book gold when his son Adam asked him “what a tickle looked like”. Mr Hargreaves drew his first picture of the wiggly-armed orange ball with legs – Mr Tickle – and the Mr Men franchise was born.

The children’s books are still selling phenomenally well and the characters have spawned two TV series – the classic one narrated by Arthur Lowe and a more modern one in which the characters get updated with more stylistic artwork and a smattering of regional accents.

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