There is an alternate history of British comic strips. While Dennis the Menace and the Bash Street Kids dominated the bottom shelves of every musty, street-corner newsagent’s shop, other less celebrated creations thrived in cluttered bedrooms and battered plastic satchels alike. A welter of self-made comics were being lovingly crafted by fevered schoolkids all around the country, forged in smudgy felt-tip pen during rainy indoor lunchtimes and the boring Sunday hinterland between Farming Outlook and Last of the Summer Wine.
One of these kids was Sussex’s Paul Putner – captured here, looking not entirely comfortable at a 1978 Pontins cabaret…
Over the last three decades, Paul has become one of Britain’s most in-demand screen actors. Beginning his career on the stand-up comedy circuit, he has appeared in Spaced, Shaun of the Dead, Look Around You, Little Britain and Stewart Lee’s Comedy Vehicle. In recent years, there have also been roles in hit TV dramas Downton Abbey and Call the Midwife. But his journey through almost every corner of the comedy landscape and beyond arguably began with the felt-tipped pages of his own colourful 1970s comic, Yippee!.
Over to you, Paul…
“1976. The ‘boinnnnnng‘ of the-spring loaded postbox flap on a Saturday morning. Even if I was halfway though scoffing down a bowl of soggy Puffa Puffa Rice or watching the last five minutes of Marine Boy, I would cease all activities and ‘Billy Whizz’ down the hallway to grab the latest issue of Monster Fun that was laying on the doormat next to my big bruvva’s delivery of Hot Car magazine.
The weekend had properly arrived!
This wasn’t my only access to the joy of comics. My dear old grandparents, Jack and Peggy, would always festoon me with another stack of brightly-coloured publications to pore over before Sunday lunch. I was spoilt rotten. It was invariably a hostess trolley filled with copies of The Beano, The Dandy, Beezer, Sparky, Whizzer & Chips, Topper, Cor!!, Knockout, Shiver & Shake and erm… Bunty. Ah yes, Bunty, a comic for girls. Grandad had bought it for me by accident., the fool! I’ll never forget the family’s hilarity that a boy would EVER read Bunty.
Arf! The very thought of it.
Tee-hee! I did though, readers…coz it was a comic.
Now… it made sense that a kid so enamoured with – say – Whoopee! comic would attempt to create a comic of his very own; the imaginatively titled, Yippee! comic. This bold endeavour was actually a dual effort with my schoolmate, Robin Englebright. We drew each issue separately on our own kitchen tables, so there wasn’t much consistency for our readers other than the titular brand. And I say ‘readers’… our readership was basically each other, our families and a few spods at school. From 1976 to 1979, I must have produced around twenty odd issues of Yippee! and a couple of summer specials to boot. There was even a Christmas annual! It wasn’t available in any good bookshops (or even middling bookshops).
The pages I have chosen for your delectation are a short strip taken from the aforementioned Christmas 1978 Yippee! annual. The hapless Wally was ‘the unluckiest boy in the world’, and in many ways he was the precursor to Unlucky Alf from the BBC comedy sketch programme The Fast Show. Oi, where’s my royalties Paul Whitehouse!
I’m particularly fond of this strip because of the snarky ending, but also for the double-page collage I created to showcase Wally’s toy shop spoils. The pictures were carefully snipped from the back pages of one of Mum’s bulky mail order catalogues. The cuttings were adhered onto A4 sheets with great care, and also probably some mild solvent intoxication. How many kids in the Seventies immediately flicked to that glossy Aladdin’s Cave toy section to see what they might get for Christmas, eh? (Then, afterwards, a quick shuftie at the lingerie and underwear pages. Don’t pretend you didn’t…)
On reflection, the pre-pubescent level of dogged commitment for such small reward really impresses me now. I truly wish I had even a smidgen of that artistic drive and prolificness today. I’ve been dithering for three days just to write this drivel that you’re currently skim-reading. Twelve-year-old me would have presented a comprehensive thesis about the pros and cons of self-publishing and posted it to Bob Fischer last week. Given, it would be an ill thought-out thesis with not much insight, but 5000 words nonetheless.
So… the moral of Wally’s story is ‘You don’t get something for nothing’ . Maybe my procrastinating 2023 self should take heed?
The other, more important message in this tale is ‘Don’t trust a goofy-toothed, dead-eyed grifter in a top hat who hangs out on street corners’.
This was brought to you by Bic pens, Caran d’ Ache felt tips, Gloy glue and Kays summer catalogue 1977.”
Thanks, Paul! Felt Trips is a collaborative effort. If anyone wants to contribute their own childhood drawings from the era, I would be utterly delighted – please drop me a line using the “Contact” link at the top of the page. A good quality scan would be perfect, but – if not – then a clear photo of your artwork, lying flat, is fine. And maybe a few words of explanation, too: when the drawings were done, how old you were, what inspired you to tackle those particular subjects? Thanks so much.
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