Millie Week 82: Mon 30 March - Sat 4 April 1992

 

Having just had two weeks of the parping daffodil in Smith, meet his progenitor in Millie, Des the weed. He was introduced in the previous year when Richard first built his window box, and he was to return every spring afterwards.

The real reason Des got invented was because I wasn't allowed to have a cat in the strip - and after a few months of solid real-world storylines I occasionally needed to let rip with the bit of hard core whimsy of the kind that only animal characters will let you get away with. 

It's interesting to see what comics editors will let you get away with. In the fifth strip, the phrase 'Oh go pollinate yourself' was passed without a murmur. However, I did get a phone call from the comics editor asking whether 'vacuole' was a rude word.

Easter Traditions

Today is the first day of the Easter Holiday in the UK - we get Good Friday and Easter Monday off. Most people use the four days of consecutive freedom as a chance to do some unnecessary DIY. But there are other Easter traditions as well.

No bank holiday is complete without at least one showing of The Great Escape. We're not quite at the level of ABC putting on 'A Christmas Story' on a loop on Christmas Eve, but we're nearly there. The advent of multi-channel TV in Britain means that somewhere on the EPG you are guaranteed to see Steve McQueen failing to escape from the Nazis.

The correct time to eat Easter eggs is a bone of contention between me and Linda. I've been brought up to believe you're not allowed to eat them until Easter Sunday. Linda has been brought up to believe you can eat them as soon as they turn up on the shelves of Asda. Honestly, did Christ die for nothing?

Razzzzzz

We know a song about that, don't we? Here's Spike Milligan, in a horned helmet that suits him just right, doing 'The Raspberry Song - Everything is Fresh Today'.

Floral Dance

If you don't know the tune, here it is. Imagine, at the so-called height of punk, this was number two in the hit parade in 1977. It was only kept off the top of the charts by Paul McCartney's Mull of Kintyre.

Millie Week 81: Mon 23 - Sat 28 March 1992

I know nothing about computer games - it's an area of popular culture that has completely passed me by. A few months after writing this series of strips I thought I'd try a Sega megadrive console, in an attempt to see what the fuss was about. Dare I say it, most computer games are deadly dull - I can't see the attraction at all.

The long string of figures Millie reads out of the paper were TV+ codes. The idea was that you programmed the codes into your VCR and it would record the programme you wanted, if by some miracle you had managed to input the long string of 16 figures correctly. It was an attempt at user friendliness which was anything but.

Guest Star: Sooky Rottweiler

I've been very tardy in responding to Cynthia l'Ecuyer generously giving Smith and Jones an Acadian summer vacation in her strip about a year ago. Here's Sooky Rottweiler's guest spot in mine...

This strip also explains why humans can't hear the parping of the daffodils.

Colonel Bogey

Yes, the music actually is Colonel Bogey. All the notes, not just the ones that fit into an airhorn.