Alan Cumming walked back through a door he hadn’t opened in forty years. His visit to DC Thomson in Dundee this week turned into something close to a time machine.
The Scottish actor worked at DC Thomson in the early 1980s. Drama school came next. He was young then, caught between high school and the start of something bigger. The career that followed took him to Broadway and eventually to television on both sides of the Atlantic. He came back this week and found the building full of memories he’d half-forgotten.
Cumming is best known internationally for his Emmy-nominated role in The Good Wife and his Tony Award-winning turn in Cabaret on Broadway. In Scotland, he’s a consistent presence in arts advocacy. The DC Thomson chapter predates all of it.
Cumming described the visit on Instagram as “a deep dive down memory lane.” The tour started with old photo love stories he’d appeared in for Blue Jeans and Jackie magazines. Photo love stories were a fixture of British teen publishing in that era – short romantic narratives told through photographs, with young actors playing the parts. Both Blue Jeans and Jackie were read by millions of young people across Britain. Seeing his younger face printed across those pages, four decades later, had to hit differently.
The letters page moment may have hit hardest of all. Cumming had hosted the letters section of Tops magazine back then, signing off every time as “Young Alan.” During the tour, he read that signature on the actual printed page. It was right there in the building. His DC Thomson story started inside those same walls. That’s a very specific kind of full-circle.
The biggest surprise came partway through the tour. Cumming discovered that this week’s issue of the Beano actually features him. The Beano is one of Britain’s most enduring comics, a flagship DC Thomson title running since 1938. He had no idea going in. He found out mid-tour, surrounded by the team who put the issue together. His Instagram caption captured the moment with a run of exclamation marks, and they felt entirely earned.
He got to meet Dennis the Menace, Gnasher, and the whole Beano crew during the visit. The team also gave him a golden Gnasher badge to commemorate the appearance. Beano readers will understand the significance of that badge.
DC Thomson has been publishing from Dundee for over a century. Its titles have included some of the best-known names in British print, from the Beano to The Sunday Post. For Cumming to have spent a year there at the start of his working life adds an unexpected chapter to the story most people think they know about him.
There was a professional note woven into the day as well. Cumming used the visit to thank the Northwood Charitable Trust for their support of Pitlochry Festival Theatre, a Scottish arts organization he’s connected with. He closed his caption with thanks to David Thomson and the full DC Thomson staff, writing that the trip had given him “even more happy memories of my time at DCTs.”
That phrase carries weight. The original year was clearly a good one. This visit didn’t overwrite anything. It layered on top, giving old memories new company. Not many people return to their first job and find it still has surprises waiting.
He walked out of DC Thomson this week with a golden Gnasher badge. Not a bad souvenir for forty years of distance.