New Andy Capp Collection Number 1: No. 1 (The Andy Capp Collection)

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Two of the constables who observe Andy's drunken behavior are named Alan and Trevor. [10] Continuation [ edit ] Once I cottoned on to this facet of the strip,” he said, “about Andy being the child and Florrie being the mother — I started to draw her in a more buxom and motherly way. I also made Andy a little smaller. I did this deliberately and after a lot of thought. It works more easily for me when the pair look like mother and child. I think I’m right. Andy would be a totally unlikeable brute if he and Florrie had children to look after.”

Cigarettes and Alcohol: Andy Capp, extensive article about Reg Smythe and the comic strip, at PlanetSlade In the comic strip, the magic goes on. Smythe had so thoroughly and profoundly evolved the character of Andy Capp that he lives on without his creator. Like a miracle. At the height of his popularity, the comic strip equalled Charles Schulz’s Peanuts for global fame, was syndicated to 1,700 newspapers worldwide and translated into 14 different languages. More than many comic strips in the 1960s, Andy Capp was, and remains, essentially a character-driven comic strip. Like Garry Trudeau’s Doonesbury and Lynn Johnston’s For Better or For Worse and, later, Stephan Pastis’ Pearls Before Swine. The comedy arises from the personality of the characters. But in Andy Capp, Smythe turned a stereotype into character. And the character was Smythe.Well, I’d sketched this little man as a working-class type wearing a cloth cap, so I thought the name Cap would be as good a name for him as any. Cap? Capp? Fred Capp perhaps? Then, as an afterthought, I drew his face with the cap pulled well down over his eyes, obscuring the top half of his face. How about Bill Capp? But neither Fred nor Bill seemed to have the right ring to it. Whenever this happened (also mainly in the earlier strips), the roles are then reversed, with Andy usually confronting Flo for being late from going to bingo and sometimes striking her with either his fist or chasing her out the door with a push broom or a chair with the intent to clobber her with said object. Demobilized in 1946, Smythe returned to Hartlepool, but, unable to find work, he soon left for London. There, after an extended period of unemployment, he found a job at the General Post Office in 1950. He also married Vera Whittaker. In 1982, a musical version of Andy Capp opened in Manchester and then went on to play in London’s West End for six or seven months. And a television show began in early 1988 but was soon abandoned. Neither production achieved anything like the success of the comic strip. Why?

The hilariously workshy northerner from Hartlepool, often seen stumbling home late from the pub, also inspired a West End musical, a TV series starring Likely Lads actor James Bolam and a stage play with Tim Healy. Early on,” says Don Markstein at his Toonopedia, “the strip was accused of perpetuating stereotypes about Britain’s Northerners, who are seen in other parts of England as chronically unemployed, dividing their time between the living room couch and the neighborhood pub. ... But Smythe, himself a native of that region, had nothing but affection for his good-for-nothing protagonist, a fact which showed in his work. Since the very beginning, Andy has been immensely popular among the people he supposedly skewers.” If you take the time to make a study of my characters,” he says, “the character that is nicest and best is Florrie. Why, therefore, am I never accused of being a feminist? She is my creation as well, isn’t she?” A statue of Andy Capp was erected in Hartlepool on 28 June 2007. It was sculpted by Jane Robbins. [14] Book collections and reprints [ edit ] United Kingdom [ edit ]In 1931, Smythe quit school at the earliest permissible age, 14. “I was somewhere near the bottom of the class. I was the kind of bloke, if someone said, ‘What is 2 and 2,’ I’d say 22. Up till then, I never drew. I didn’t draw then, either. I was on the dole.” Revel Barker, who worked for the Mirror Group, reported a different origin for Andy: Smythe, he said, “told me the inspiration for the strip was a guy he saw at a Harlepool football match, which he’d attended with his father. It started to rain and the man standing next to him took off his cap and put it inside his coat. Young Reg said, ‘Mister, it’s started to rain.’ The man said he knew that. ‘But—it’s started to rain, and you’ve taken your cap off,’ said the puzzled Reg. The man looked at the youngster as if he was stupid. ‘You don’t think, do you, that I’m going to sit in the house all night wearing a wet cap.’” Maley, Don. "Super Roads to Riches are Paved with Comics", Editor & Publisher (30 November 1968). Archived at The Internet Archive. Accessed 12 November 2018.

And Smythe’s father was known to wear a cloth cap. “Even when he played football!” his son claimed. “But on Sundays he would show respect and put on a bowler hat to be posh.”The mindset’s exactly the same,” he said. “I can still go down to the Boilermarker’s Club and get two or three ideas just listening to the conversation.” Early on, the Andy Capp strip was accused of perpetuating stereotypes about Britain's Northerners, who are seen in other parts of England as chronically unemployed, dividing their time between the living room couch and the neighbourhood pub, with a few hours set aside for fistfights at football games... But Smythe, himself a native of that region, had nothing but affection for his good-for-nothing protagonist, which showed in his work. Since the very beginning, Andy has been immensely popular among the people he supposedly skewers. [9]