...I can still remember how that music used to make me smile.
Me and Peepsie were singing that together not so very long ago, but I digress before I've even begun.
Happy Anniversary for next month, Roger! Lovely to read about all that, and an excellent first script if I'm any judge. I have the advantage over everyone else here in that not only can I picture the office you walked into that day from my own memory, but also the staff, assuming they hadn't changed that much in the eight years that followed until the day I repeated your walk at the same age, though entering the adjoining room, to become the office junior in 'The Beano'.
I loved it also, and the high of that first script being accepted will never leave me. I have to report though that I beat you to it. I was invited by the editor to 'have a go at a script' after four days in the job, four days which up until then were spent familiarising myself with the maze of a building that housed all of those famous comics, and reading old Beano files. I confess the invitation had me bricking it!
I drafted out a 'Pup Parade' (the Bash Street Kids dogs had their own one-page story) idea that afternoon, took it home with me, and wrote it out about four times until I was happy with it. I dropped it in the editor's tray in the morning and went to the pub with the lads from the office for lunch, where I sought the opinion of one of them (now the Beano Editor himself) about my first nervous attempt, showing him one of the copies I had made earlier, but which I'd rejected because my handwriting wasn't good enough (I left nowt to chance). He was very complimentary about it, but pointed out a flaw which would probably result in it being rejected. When I got back to the office, the script was lying on my desk with a red pencil tick beside the title. I was shaking visibly as I asked my colleague on the adjoining desk to mine (same guy from the pub) what this meant, in a very quiet whisper. He raised an eyebrow, smiled, and told me it was passed unchanged, and that I should put it in the tray for the runner to take it to the typists to have it typed out properly and sent to the artist for pencilling. I honestly can't quantify just how I felt at that moment, but I can summon it up like it was yesterday when I think about it. It was followed by several aftershocks, as the artist brought in the pencil sketch of the script for approval, then the inked page, and then when eventually it appeared in the comic itself.
A mere thirty-two years ago for me, Roger (started work, July 4th, 1977). I was there six years before freelancing tempted me to jump the fence, But those were very happy years indeed, and I fully realise how lucky I was to have them.
So - are you planning a party?
