Age: First appeared in 1941. So, 70.
Appearance: Seafarer! Bluejacket! Blustering boat-dweller!
Whoa, calm down. Who is this guy? Imbecile! Dilettante! Troglodyte!
He's an idiot? No, you are, for not knowing who Captain Haddock is.
Why, who is he? He's a retired multi-millionaire sailor and adventurer who just happens to be Tintin's best mate. What he isn't, and until last week had never been, is Scottish.
What happened last week? They released the trailer for The Adventures of Tintin: The Secret of the Unicorn, directed by Steven Spielberg, due out here in the autumn. It stars a motion-captured Haddock voiced by Andy "Gollum" Serkis with, horror of horrors, a Scottish accent.
That's stupid! He's a Cornish sea dog! Illiterate! Abecedarian! Poppycock peddler!
He's not? Not in Hergé's originals, no. In fact, in Red Rackham's Treasure – the book on which much of the film is based – Captain Haddock is revealed to be descended from the Chevalier François de Hadoque, a ship-of-the-line captain in King Louis XIV's navy.
So he's French? Of French descent, but Marlinspike Hall, the ancestral home of the Haddock family, is very clearly in the author's home country. Which suggests that Haddock, like Tintin himself, is in fact Belgian.
Meaning they should all be doing Poirot impressions? Meaning a Cornish Captain Haddock is no less inaccurate than a Scottish one.
I guess if he's not Belgian he might as well be from anywhere. Exactly. Bring on the Namibians, Patagonians and Parthians!
Why all the long words? It's his thing. The black-bearded mariner has been adored by fans for years for his verbally inventive insults, short temper and insatiable thirst for whisky, rum and trouble.
Well, he certainly sounds Scottish to me. Celtophobe! Caricaturist! Chauvinist!
Do say: "Tamperers! Tinkerers! Meddling mountebanks!"
Don't say: "Lang may yer lum reek!"