I've just found the answer.... 5/12/64, courtesy of phil-comics on ebay (where you got the scan, Peter, by the looks of things!)
And now another question: Who was the Brassneck artist?
i preffered Holroyds other strip that ran when Brassneck didn't appear, think it was called Joe White and the Seven Dwarves? (Not sure about that last word - it was more likely something that rhymed with it - but it was much more slapstick than Brassneck). He also did Spunky and his Spider which I never really got into.
Joe White and the Seven Dwarfs and Spunky and his Spider were the bookends to the first, very long, Brassneck series. Joe White ending in 1964 to make way for Brassneck and, in 1968, Brassneck making way for Spunky and his arachnid pal. I always thought that having a huge, hairy spider as a chum was a little bit creepy and to enjoy the Spunky strip you had to edit out the fact that his pet was a spider at all and see him instead as a sort of eight-legged, web-spinning, dog.
Ten minutes after I made the last entry something jangled in my brain telling me that what I'd written wasn't quite right and on checking this proved to be so.
Joe White (Dandy Nos 1129-1201) did indeed make way for Brassneck (Nos 1202-1370) but then Spunky and his Spider actually began in Dandy No 1360 (16/12/67) some ten issues before Brassneck ended in No 1370 (24/2/68). Spunky's spider was named Scamper by the way.
I remember when Brassneck began-liked him a lot, but felt Charlie `Chuckler` Brand rather insipid! I still have a 1966 (Pub 1965) Dandy Annual, which was the first one that Brassneck appeared in. The unusual thing is...Brassneck has no dialogue at all in the Annual strip that year!
who was the weedy, bespectacled creep who jammed 'BRASSNECK'S ' circuits [via remote-control box] causing him to go haywire [a long-running story device in early 70s 'DANDY'] ?
The `Weedy` fellow was called "Swatty". His dad was a professor of some sort and built the device for his son to `interfere` with Brassneck! The daftest part of the story was why Charlie Brand didn't even try to figure out why Brassneck was `malfunctioning` all the time!