Top Five Great Sidekicks in Literature

5. Sancho Panza, Don Quixote’s devoted sidekick from Miguel de Cervantes’s Don Quixote (two volumes, 1605 and 1614)
4. Samwise Gamgee, Frodo Baggins’s trusty sidekick in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (1954-55)
3. Friday, Robinson Crusoe’s native manservant from Daniel DeFoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719)
2. Dr. John H. Watson, Sherlock Holmes’s confidante and biographer in Arthur Conan Doyle’s short stories, beginning with “A Study in Scarlet” (1888)
1. Patroklus, young companion of the sulking Achilles, whose death inspires Achilles to rejoin the war against the Trojans and kill Hector, from Homer’s Iliad (“Song of Ilium,” 8th or 7th century BC)

Runner up: Paul Fleming, laid-back Australian sidekick to fidgety E-Verse host Ernest Hilbert; also noted beer drinker and rugby enthusiast