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On 19th January 1955, this well-meaning, but droning bore of a man blundered into the Captain in the pages of the Tintin magazine, as a thunderstorm raged around Marlinspike Hall at the start of The Calculus Affair - and life (insurance) was never the same again for Tintin & Cº!

Modeled after a salesman who had called on Hergé in Boitsfort during the war (as he told Numa Sadoul, "a character who wanted to sell me something, I no longer remember what", but who, upon installing himself in the house, gestured to Hergé's own armchair and said, expansively, "Pull up a seat!"), Jolyon Wagg, agent for the Rock Bottom Insurance company can be guaranteed to turn up when and where most unexpected, and also least wanted, for the rest of the series.

Dressed in belt and braces (ever the cautious insurance man!), whether regaling his usually unwilling audience with anecdotes of his Uncle Anatole; moving his wife and family unannounced and uninvited into the temporarily vacant Marlinspike Hall; holding an impromptu motor rally in the grounds; or taking his country dance club to a revolution beset country, Wagg is designed to cause maximum irritation to all.

Hergé invested him with hobbies, relatives, ostentatious dress-sense, massive self-regard, and a general lack of empathy which reflected all the things that the artist himself disliked in others.

However, it's also possible to read the positives in Wagg too: he intends to get on with everybody, so he isn't judgmental; his egotism may be unchecked, but he is unfettered by self-doubt or self-loathing, and therefore bounces back in adversity, picks himself up and starts all over again; he doesn't hold a grudge; he has a social network and hobbies and interests because he is interested in people and doing things; and he is a loving family man, in a series where the lead character has no family or love-interest.

One can compare him with the character played by John Candy in the film, Planes, Trains and Automobiles: Del Griffith, the traveling shower-curtain ring salesman is invested with many of the same traits as Wagg.
He certainly irritates Steve Martin's Neal Page, who is superficially the "successful" one of the pair.
But Page is reduced to apoplectic rages and invective-filled ranting when the world does not meet his expectations (remind you of any sea-captains of our acquaintance?), whilst Griffith is better able to overcome the set-backs which fate inflicts on their journey - and it is Del who the audience come to side with by the end of the trip.

So happy birthday, Jolyon Wagg!

Yes. Happy Birthday, Jolyon.
You always brought a smile to my face with tales of your Uncle Anatole and your rather misguided observation, 'Ooo. Had a tiff with the wife, have we?'

I'd like to go on record here to apologise unreservedly to any Welsh members out there.
I've stated on this forum before that for some reason when I first encountered Wagg his speech (Albeit translated) and look led me to believe he was Welsh, and I even approximated an accent when I read his words.

Maybe it was the name, Jolyon? (Although that appears to be a medieval English variant of the name, 'Julian'!

In the original French text his name is Séraphin Lampion.

Question for the French readers of Tintin: does this comic across as a comical name in French?.

I can only find that Séraphin was the name of an Italian saint, and Lampion is an oil lamp.

Séraphin is related to "Seraphim", usually taken in Western tradition to refer to the highest rank of angels in Heaven, but in Judaism (and possibly other religious traditions) it is additionally used in the Torah to refer to snakes or serpents.

Lampion is an oil lamp, as number1fan says, specifically a small one.

So him being a slightly "dim" angel seems to be the joke, his arrival upon the scene is as a none-too-welcome "celestial" visitor, bringing "light" to those he encounters, with a hint of also being a "slippery customer" (I know snakes are actually dry, not slippery, but we're going on stereotypes and traditional imagery here, so forgive me a small lapse of accuracy please).

It's also purely speculation on my part, and I don't even know if it also works in French, but it might – at least from an English-speaker's perspective – bring with it a suggestion of the "snake oil" salesmen - those hucksters you see in Westerns and "Lucky Luke" books, bringing patent remedies and other worthless goods to the unwitting town's people they visit.

It took a little effort from Hergé to name him.

Some of the other names which he considered and rejected were: Tringlot, Triplot, Vermoute, Ballotin, Rigodon, Piton (listed twice in penciled notes he kept in the margin of a page of The Calculus Affair), Crampon (these last two words also being items of climbing gear), Babut, Balet, Biboppe, Bondu, Malice and Ragout.

Back in the English-speaking world, Jolyon, being a slightly fussy variant of "Julian" which also echoes "jolly", was a good choice, and Wagg is an inspired selection as it describes his jokey "waggish" personality...