It's probably easier to ask which
strips you didn't write ...
No, I never wrote the Leslie Crowther strip (Crowther in Trouble), never The Benny Hill Page. They were written by an awful nice guy named Geoff Cowan, who married Alan Fennell's most beautiful secretary, and was for a time Chief Sub-Editor of Look-In. Geoff used to infuriate me, because he was passionate about using quotes. I think he must have been paid by the quote. He put everything in the damned things, and I once told Alan that if he (Alan) didn't stop Geoff putting quotes round words in my scripts I would kill him (Geoff). Happily, it never came to that. Geoff wrote the Cannon & Ball strip in the 80s too. On The Buses was written by my old pal Scott Goodall, who coincidentally lives about fifteen miles away from me here in France.
You can always tell Geoff's strips from mine, because he spelled a long-drawn out cry for assistance as "Heeeeeelp!" whereas I, thinking that nobody shouted the word with a prolonged 'e', preferred "Helllllp!". Once upon a time, to digress a little on a different but related subject, Scott Goodall, Tom Tully and I were in the Hoop And Grapes opposite Fleetway in Farringdon Street, arguing about the 'art effect' THAKKA-THAKKA-THAKKA. Tom reckoned it was the sound of a light machine gun. Scott and I believed it to be the sound of a helicopter. The argument became quite heated, and I was amused to notice that the rest of the pub's clientele had fallen silent and was collectively standing there, open-mouthed, as though listening to escaped lunatics!
The Smurfs was of course a syndicated strip. I had to
write a column, each week, apparently from Pierre The
Clown, as I recall, that tied in with the thing. It
was all done in conjunction with some petrol company
or other (it was the National garages; I well remember
forcing my parents to go to their garages so we could
get Smurf window stickers! - Alistair). Pierre The Clown
- Peter Picton, the descendant of the famous General
Picton - was an enthusiastic barfly, comme moi. We hit
it off very well. But eventually the Smurfs came to
their end, and so did we.
It's widely assumed that Roger
Price wrote the Tomorrow People strip for Look-In so
would you like to take your bow now in front of these
nice people?
Yes, I did actually write the Tomorrow People myself - I'm happy to say that Roger Price was very complimentary indeed about my work. I used to go down to watch the rehearsal for the series in Hampton, and often Alan Fennell and I would have lunch with Roger out at the studios. There was a time when Roger proposed that I join him writing in some project or other, but it never came about, and I can't even remember what it was! So, no, Roger never wrote anything for the comic. Neither did P. J. Hammond. For one thing, Alan Fennell would never have paid them enough! Generous personally, he was unbelievably stingy with company money - this made him a much respected editor thanks to his always coming in under budget!
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| It's Flintlock. 1976.
Art: Bill Titcombe |
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| The Tomorrow People. 1976. Art:
John Burns |
I used to ask him, peevishly, why he never told whether he liked my stuff. "'Cos you'd bleedin' well ask for a rise," he'd reply.
Did you have much other contact
with TV cast and crews then?
No, I seldom had contact with TV people. They always tended to sneer at Look-In anyway, and there were a few occasions where I had to bang the table at PR types from various TV companies when they curled their lips and remarked, "Oh, you represent such a tiny little magazine". It got up my nose. Especially when our sales touched the half million mark thanks to series like Kung Fu, the awful David Cassidy, and later, Dangermouse.
Sadly, actors and the like were just the same. On the other hand, American actors - like Space: 1999's Martin Landau, were charming and interested. Of course, they have a different attitude in The States to comic strips (and as Angus's 1975 Space:1999 annual told me, Landau used to work as a newspaper cartoonist so he would have been particularly interested - Alistair). As they do here in France. It's only in the UK that 'intellectuals' run them down. The saps. I don't mean Saps. I mean several other four-letter words.
I had a very nice feedback from Keith Waterhouse himself on the first Worzel Gummidge, which Arthur Ranson drew. I remember having Worzel wanting a 'babby' and kidnapping a ventriloquist's dummy, with which he became vastly annoyed because it wouldn't speak. Keith said that he wished he'd thought of the idea himself, which I took as a real compliment. He was one of my favourite authors/journalists at the time.
When I did go down to see casts, directors and so forth in action at various studios, I was never totally happy about it for other reasons. Rehearsals - and even shooting - are so damned boring if one has only to stand around and watch. I was on set for various Tomorrow People rehearsals, for example, and yawned all the time.
What can I say - I'm aghast!
I did accompany the Follyfoot team to Aviemore for the
purpose of writing a Follyfoot Special for Look-In (this
was issued to tie-in with the launch of the show's third
series - Alistair). That was great fun. We were also
at YTV studios, Leeds with them, accompanying the shooting
somewhere on location. Arthur English was an exceptional
joy, and Chris Rodska and Steve Hodson were good company.
I also accompanied the groups Slik and Flintlock in several venues in order to get interviews from them all. That was fine, because we all got on very well. Flintlock, especially, came to regard me as a sort of boozy avuncular mascot. Young Holloway, however, I never really knew. They kept him under wraps as though he was Elvis. |
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