Wednesday 31 October 2012

Halloween II

Just in time! My schedule over October hasn't given me much time to do any cartoons - I was hoping to do a lot of drawing backstage while appearing in Oliver, but found myself on stage doing chorus work much more than I was expecting. So, here, just in time, is today's cartoon. I think I'm going to be spending most of November catching up with myself, working through to the new year. And then I shall rest, and start writing again...

'Bumme', fake Olde English for 'Bum', like 'Shoppe' or 'Reneaiesseancee Fayreeeee'. Not a request.

Monday 29 October 2012

Bobbing

We're at that time of the year when the strip starts to follow a regular pattern, as the calendar follows its usual path toward Christmas and the new year. Halloween is followed by Guy Fawkes, Remembrance Day and then Thanksgiving (or my birthday as it is known around here) and the long haul towards Christmas. My usual habit is to have the strips written months in advance and then draw them just in time for posting on the site, and this year my main inspiration for ideas has been the calendar. There are a couple of extra events this year that have been added to the schedule, you'll recognize them when you reach them.

So for the moment we're at Halloween, that bizarre celebration of the macabre that originated in Europe, mutated into something else entirely in America and recently got sold back to us in its new orange and black polyester clad form. Here's Smith's take on apple bobbing.

Saturday 27 October 2012

Millie Week 60 - Mon 28 Oct- Sat 2 Nov 1991

Philip Schofield is a TV presenter. At that time he would have been working on Children's TV, presenting the Saturday morning show on BBC1. He was that rarest of creatures, a children's TV personality who wasn't creepy (yes, I mean you Mr Savile), patronising or exhaustingly over enthusiastic. He's now Mr ITV, presenting all the prime time shows that Ant and Dec have turned down. And I'd still trust him with my problems more than the Prime Minister or the Leader of the Opposition.

Ironically, I don't think we ever saw Hazel Montebello again. She became one of those hanging plot threads that never got attached to anything.

Friday 26 October 2012

The nocturnal diddleys

This usually happens to me when I'm doing a show. Occasionally I'm obliged to do a show I hate, like The Sound of Music. Rodgers and Hammerstein lovingly crafted a raft of songs which are syrupy, trite, and complete and utter earworms - once they enter your head they will not leave. There is nothing worse than going to bed with that ghastly 'Goodnight, farewell, auf wiedershen, goodbye' tune stuck in your head, and waking up in the morning with it still there, having taken over your dreams for the past eight hours!

I think Cabaret was the worst. That's a brilliant show with wonderful music, but there's a non-stop Germanic jazz-oompah rhythm to a lot of the songs that takes over the mind completely. Bom tikka bom bom, bom tikka bom bom, bom tikka bom bom, bom tikka bom bom (repeat for a month or until severely medicated).

I'm actually in a show at the moment. Oliver is playing at the White Rock Theatre in Hastings right now - it started on Wednesday and the last night is tomorrow. I'm mainly in the chorus for this one, though I do have a short character part in act two as Doctor Grimwig, the pompous doctor who gives Oliver a checkover while he staying at the Brownlow's house. Yes, once again the tunes are all earworms, but they're good ones.You can't beat a bit of Lionel Bart.

Wednesday 24 October 2012

Deeee

....but in my nightmares they never reach the 'deeee'...

Monday 22 October 2012

Diddly diddly

I have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to folk music. It all sounds the same to me. It usually consists of a bunch of bearded besmocked musicians playing diddley diddley diddley diddley on their fiddles while a woman with ribbons in her hair sticks a finger in her ear and sings in a slightly flat tone about the politics of 250 years ago. I'm probably being horribly unfair.

Saturday 20 October 2012

Millie Week 59: Mon 21 Oct - Sat 27 Oct 1991

My first week of Millie without any Millie in it (apart from the exposition in Monday's strip), dealing with the aftermath of the previous week's DEF concert.

I'm currently growing a beard in order to play Doctor Grimwig in the musical, Oliver. I'm quite alarmed to find I'm turning into Nigel, only with a greyer beard.


Friday 19 October 2012

Wednesday 17 October 2012

Aerial ears

Radio 2 is what the BBC used to call 'The Light Programme'. It always used to be the safe radio station for undemanding housewives, but now we have commercial radio to cater for that demographic, so it's now a lot better than that.

If you've never listened to British radio before, it's now all online. Take a listen here.

Radio 1: Chart music. I now find it unlistenable to, not because I don't like new music but because most records are now autotuned to death and I can detect it so easily it sets my teeth on edge. Lots of rap, grime and X-factor winners.
Radio 1 Xtra: Urban music - essentially the BBC trying to beat the pirate stations at their own game.
Radio 2: Pop music for an older demographic. It has a heavier dependence on oldies, and features non-threatening DJs. Adele's natural home. However, in the evenings their remit widens and you'll find some excellent specialist music programmes on there.
Radio 3: Highbrow classical music, talks and drama.
Radio 4: This is what my radio tends to be tuned to permanently. News, talk, documentaries, drama and comedy. Imagine NPR, but remove the smugness and make it interesting.
Radio 4 Extra: Classic drama and comedy from the Radio 4 archives. Plus some children's programmes.
Radio 5: News, sport and phone ins. Radio Bloke without the right-wing nuttiness.
Radio 6: Music for musos. Sort of like Mojo or Uncut magazines on the air. Most of the DJs are chin stroking rock journalists.
And radio stations for Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, another bit of Northern Ireland that isn't speaking to the rest of Northern Ireland (sigh) and a few Celtic languages.

Monday 15 October 2012

Ear stroke

Good news Scrumpy fans. You've got a whole week of the blues-ridden bunny starting with this. I'll be playing with his ears all week.

Saturday 13 October 2012

Millie Week 58: Mon 14 Oct - Sat 20 Oct 1991

The Wombling Song (w: Mike Batt, best known for Art Garfunkel's Bright Eyes and for being the Svengali behind Katie Mellua's career) was a Gnomefumbler favourite. I don't know it ever made it to a guitar textbook, but we certainly covered it after finding some sheet music for it in a junk shop. Here's a video of it by the original Wombles. Inside those furry suits you will find some of the most respected session musicians in England, including Chris Spedding and Clem Cattini.

"Oggi Oggi Oggi" is a rabble rousing call and response chant. It goes:

Q: Oggi Oggi Oggi!
A: Oi! Oi! Oi!
Q: Oggi Oggi Oggi!
A: Oi! Oi! Oi!
Q: Oggi!
A: Oi!
Q: Oggi!
A: Oi!
Q: Oggi Oggi Oggi!
A: Oi! Oi! Oi!

Most of Max Boyce's act in the 1970s consisted of this, repeated endlessly.


Friday 12 October 2012

New! Bigger! Brighter! Bayeuxer!

Yes folks, this is the first HD posting of Smith. All you have to do is click on the image and you'll be able to see the cartoon at a resolution of 1,200 pixels wide - that's twice as many pixels across as GoComics' system will allow. Twice the width, twice the height, four times the pixels! You can actually count the threads in the Bayeux tapestry here.

The anniversary of the battle of Hastings (which conveniently took place in a town called Battle a few miles inland) falls on Sunday, hence today's tribute. That and I bought a book of scenes from the Bayeux tapestry to scan for the gallery cartoon last week, and I wanted to get my money's worth out of it. Hastings will be celebrating with a big torchlight procession and a fireworks display. This seemed much more cat-friendly.

Wednesday 10 October 2012

Chimneyphone

This is a favourite trick of the seagulls around here. They perch on top of chimney pots and then call down the chimney, using the flue as a sounding box. It drives Smudge bonkers.

Monday 8 October 2012

Pussycat, Pussycat

At least, we are free from the chalky grey walls of the gallery, which were making the strip look rather dull in my opinion. We're back to the warmer backgrounds of home.

It appears that the queen in this case was the first Queen Elizabeth, so the cat, whoever he was, was lucky to get away with his head intact.

Saturday 6 October 2012

Millie Week 57; Mon October 7 - Sat Oct 12, 1991

Introducing GBH (an English legal term standing for Greivous Bodily Harm), the most notorious band in South London, who of course turn out to be a bunch of rather camp public school boys play acting at being vicious thugs.

There's form for this, of course. The town I grew up in was Tunbridge Wells, and its leafy groves and primly tidy streets have spawned a few rock acts that the Daily Mail have declared to be the end of civilisation as we know it. Shane McGowan of the Pogues spent a lot of the 70s in the town, Sid Vicious grew up there. And the ultimate punk rock band of all time, the Anti-Nowhere League, originated from the town - they were so beyond the pale that their first single was seized from its distributor by the Metropolitan Police's Obscene Publication Squad because of its expletive laden B-Side 'So What'. (The same song later got covered by Metallica.) Rather wonderfully, I've just read their Wikipedia entry, and found that they played their first gig at the same church hall that, one year later, Gnomefumbler were to play their one and only live show. And thus the circle is complete.

'Outing' was one of the big new phenomena of the time. And the Poll Tax was still a big bone of contention, at the time many people were either refusing to pay their poll tax outright, or protesting by paying their tax with bin liners full of unsorted 1p and 2p coins.

Friday 5 October 2012

Unpicking the Bayeux Tapestry

The Bayeux Tapestry, so called because it is an embroidery made in Canterbury, doesn't actually reside in Hastings - it's in Bayeux - but I've given it to the Jedwood on loan for a day.

The tapestry is possibly one of the world's first comic strips - it tells the story of the Norman invasion of England and the battle of Hastings in sequential art form, complete with captions. All that's missing is speech balloons and panels separating the episodes in the story.

Wednesday 3 October 2012

Raw sculpture

Call me old fashioned, but I do like my artists to have made some sort of effort. Just plonking a stone on a plinth and calling it art 'because the artist says so' is just cheating.

Monday 1 October 2012

Bridget Riley

Ever stood in front of a Bridget Riley op-art painting? I went to an exhibition of her stuff at the Serpentine Gallery in Hyde Park once. The paintings are huge, they take up an entire wall. Stand in front of them and stare for too long and suddenly everything goes all wibbly - all you can see is black and white lines and they shimmer and start to move of their own accord. Her paintings are quite literally staggering - it's hard to stay upright while looking at them.