It's been a bit quiet lately so I'll take a little ramble and see where it goes. Today has been an "Andy Capp" day, which means I lie on a couch and try to think up jokes about a man who lies on a couch. Amazingly (to me,at least), it's been nearly ten years since I wrote my first "Andy Capp" script. The great Reg Smythe died in June 1998 and I was asked, a couple of months later, if I'd like to take up the writing side of the strip. Because Reg left behind a huge amount of unpublished work, my scripts were only slotted in periodically until this backlog eventually ran out. I guess I've been writing it on a daily basis for about seven or eight years now and it's been a strange, but rewarding, experience. It was an impossible act to follow---Reg was a cartooning genius---and I've tried desperately hard not to turn Andy's mate, Chalkie, into an urban Dennis!
Switching on the news at lunchtime was depressing on two counts. Another campus nutcase in The States has slaughtered at least six innocent people and, secondly, this was regarded as so mundane that it was way down in the running order. As most of you know, I'm a great lover of the American West (I regard Montana as the equal best place on earth) and news of this kind saddens me greatly.
So it's back to work at being funny for a living. Sorry, that sounds self-pitying and I don't mean it to. I am extremely lucky to get paid for a job I love doing. I'm sure you'd get the same response from the other cartoonists who visit this site---Peeps, Tarks and Malky. We get money for being stupid and that can't be bad!
I've just checked the result of the 6.50 at Wolverhampton where I had put a tenner on Follow The Flag.
All in all, it's been a good day.
