A short, plucky, and notoriously choleric Frenchman, who celebrates all things French and fiercely protects his country from foreign invaders. Who does that bring to mind? Napoleon Bonaparte? Nicolas Sarkozy? Now imagine a tiny dog and a burly Frenchman next to this hero, and even before this sentence has ended, many would be thinking of Tintin. (Never mind there was no mention of a weird quiff, or that Tintin was Belgian, not quite French.) However, neither the great dictator nor the photogenic president (and certainly not the intrepid young journalist) was fond of swearing by Toutatis. If that name rings a bell, then the subject of this longish preamble may finally be clear to fans and followers — the fearless Gallic warrior Asterix, who was created by the popular writer-illustrator duo, René Goscinny and Albert Uderzo, fifty years ago.

At a glance, Napoleon, Sarkozy and Tintin could not have been farther from the pastoral idyll where Asterix lives with his peevish pet, Dogmatix, his gigantic and ever-hungry friend, Obelix, and the quick-witted Druid, Getafix. But come to think of it, a bit of all three characters can be discerned in him. Like Napoleon, Asterix is invincible; his nationalist sentiments are as fervent as those of the present French president (it is another matter that Asterix is never seen in the company of beautiful ladies); and though not a reporter, Asterix, like Tintin, has the talent for getting himself into the weirdest of adventures. When the Asterix comic strip first appeared in the pages of the Pilote magazine in 1959, it was this heady mix of political humour and social satire that quickly captivated the imagination of a post-war generation in France. Readers old and young were coming to terms with a past scarred by Nazi occupation, the Resistance, and a wounded national pride. An equally bleak and pessimistic future lay ahead of them, as their beloved nation lost its colonies in rapid succession, and went through a long phase of social turmoil in the Sixties. All that was unique to the French way of life — from its smoky cafés to great art, from gourmet cuisine to trendy couture — had to make space for the different, the culturally alien.

Asterix and his compatriots may well have a merry laugh over the fusty, tea-drinking British (who speak like the ancient spinster aunts in P.G. Wodehouse novels), mock the Swiss obsession with fondue and cuckoo clocks, and poke fun at beer-guzzling Belgians, but the age of risky humour is gone. It is highly unfashionable these days to be amused by national stereotypes, however silly or funny they might be. Think of the furore over the allegedly racist flavour of Tintin in Congo. Yet, it may not be all that unreasonable sometimes to be a bit prickly about things that did not bother people in another time. Many in Mr Sarkozy’s France may not feel very pleased about being bullied for wearing a burqa — even if the jibe came from a comic-book character.