Wensleydale

Wensleydale is one of Adam Young's gang, the Them. He is a very serious and meticulous lad. The sort who takes great interest in pet stick insects, and doesn't start making an Airfix model without first carefully reading the instructions and painting all the fiddly little bits that need painting before assembly.

He is probably the most scientifically minded of the gang and regularly reads a magazine ("my comic", as he calls it) of the Look and Learn persuasion, full of history and science. Wensleydale is sometimes known simply as "Wensley" although his parents often call him "Youngster" in the hope that he'll take the hint, as he seems to have the mind of a forty-five-year-old in a child's body.

Wensleydale is named after a valley in Northern England, one of the Yorkshire Dales, which also gives its name to a popular cheese, a favourite of Wallace and Gromit.

In the final showdown, it is somehow entirely fitting that Wensleydale should be the one who is tasked with facing down and temporarily destroying Famine. If the Four Riders of the Apocalypse are anthropomorphic personifications, the condensed essence of thousands of years of human hopes, dreams, fears, nightmares and general experience, then it makes sense that Adam's three closest chums should each have something of the essence of one of the Riders about them - and, being human, come out fully triumphant in the confrontation. Death is perfectly aware of this, which is why He concedes a draw with Adam.