Blistering barnacles! Tintin's Captain Haddock turns Scottish

But as Herg's comic creation becomes a $100 million (63m) 3D blockbuster, film buffs and some infuriated Tintin purists are asking: why has Captain Haddock suddenly become a Scot?

The trailer for director Stephen Spielberg's The Adventures of Tintin, his long-awaited take on one of Europe's most popular cartoon characters, was unveiled this week. Yet again, it appears, Hollywood has reached for a Scottish accent when it comes to a dependable grouch with a taste for drink.

"Why the blistering f*** is Captain Haddock Scottish?" one website critic exploded this week, using an twist on Captain Haddock's most famous expression, "blistering barnacles".

"There is never the remotest indication in the comics that Captain Haddock comes from Scotland, speaks with a Scottish accent, or has any Scottish connection other than an intense love for whisky. I cannot understand this decision on any level."

Tintin fans of all ages are familiar with Captain Haddock, whose ancestral home is Marlinspike Hall and whose ancestors include the British naval hero, Sir Francis Haddock. While he likes a bottle of Loch Lomond whisky, every other indication places him firmly in England.

The comic's Belgian creator, Georges Prosper Remi, known as Herg, named Haddock while at dinner with his wife. "What is that?" he asked, when seeing haddock on the menu. "A sad English fish," she replied.

Spielberg's script was co-written by Scottish screenwriter and producer, Steven Moffat, famous for his work on Doctor Who. His agent yesterday could offer no immediate reply as to why Haddock has gone Scots. But adding insult to injury, perhaps, the character in the computer animation film is voiced by Andy Serkis, the English actor best known for playing Gollum in The Lord of the Rings.

• Other famous screen Scots

"Hollywood seems to be in love with Scottish voices since Shrek and How to Train Your Dragon," said one comment on the website of the film magazine Empire - with the latter film featuring Vikings delivered with Scottish accents by Craig Ferguson and Gerard Butler.

"They probably wouldn't understand a West Country accent. Just be thankful they didn't make Haddock Welsh."

The trailer features the moment when the drunken Captain Haddock starts a fire in a rowboat. "What are you doing?" Tintin asks. "I lit a wee fire," he replies. "In a boat?" Tintin screams.One viewer referred caustically to Serkis's Scottish accent as "somewhere between Christopher Lambert's in Highlander and Robin Williams's in Mrs Doubtfire" - Scottish accents voiced by a Frenchman and an American comedian.

The Scottish film-maker Murray Grigor, a friend of the consumate film Scot, Sir Sean Connery, took a charitable view yesterday of the Scottish Captain Haddock, who makes his first appearance as a cargo ship captain unwittingly drawn into a sinister plot.

"Historically all ship's engineers and lots of ship's captains were Scots," he said. "I don't think it's really derogatory and certainly Scots enjoy a drink. I like the positive attributes."

The former director of the Edinburgh International Film Festival, Hannah McGill, said: "The Scottification of Captain Haddock is going to annoy purists, but it does follow a tradition of gruff, eccentric, cynical-but-goodhearted characters being designated Scottish in cartoonish mainstream films.

"This dependable-grouch brand of onscreen Scot dates back to Whisky Galore and I Know Where I'm Going! and I'd say it crops up more often than the violent, threatening oik who's commonly seen as the prevalent Scottish stereotype.

"And however sensitive we are to matters of accent, most of the rest of the world don't distinguish - or will see the film dubbed."