Hayfever

True fact - I used to have terrible hayfever as a child but it was cured by osteopathy. I know it sounds incredible, in fact I can barely believe it myself, but its true.

Osteopathy, for the uninitiated, is one of those alternative therapies like homoeopathy and reflexology which likes to pretend it is scientifically based but is actually a load of mumbo jumbo. It works on the theory that mechanical faults in the skeleton can cause problems in other areas of the body. My mum swears by it - I'm less convinced but I have to admit that in my case it worked. I was five or six, and I was accompanying my mum to the surgery. The doctor, Stuart Korth, offered to try out a theory he had about hayfever for free. So I got to climb onto the couch with the nose shape cut out in it (funny how the little details stick in your mind) and he massaged my back for a few minutes. And that was it. I didn't understand what was going on, I thought I was just getting a go at what my mum was having done. But I haven't had hayfever since.

My brain tells me Osteopathy should be utter rubbish. My nose knows better. And I don't think we're looking at a placebo effect here, that would assume I knew what was happening in the first place. I truly can't explain this...

Millie Week 35, Mon 29 April - Sat 4 May 1991

More business with garden centres. 'Double Stamps' refers to Green Shield Stamps, a sort of philately based loyalty scheme which was starting to die out at that point. The idea was that you were awarded a certain number of stamps according to how much money you spent. You took the stamps home and collected them in special savings books, and after five years you had enough stamps to swap for a toaster. The Green Shield stamps catalogue would always have in it something completely unattainable, like a Ford Cortina for half a million books of stamps.

Reference strip

Next time anyone asks what sex the cats are, this is the strip I'll be referring them to.

Peacocks

Ever had a shouting match with a peacock before? I have. It was when I was involved in a community opera at a big old house outside Tunbridge Wells called Broomhill. It had a fascinating history, being owned Sir David Salomons, who in the mid 19th century became the first Jewish MP. His son was a bit of a polymath, and he built himself a full sized theatre as an extension to his house where he used to put on science demonstrations. The theatre had been forgotten about for 100 years and had had just been opened up, so we were doing a show which told the story of the house and its inhabitants. It was a promenade performance, different scenes would happen in different rooms of the house, or take place outside, and the audience would troop from room to room in small groups. As a result we actors had to perform the same scene four or five times a night.

The opening scene depicted the shipwreck during the first world war in which the second David Salomon's son lost his life. A ship's fo'c'sle was built on the front lawn, around the bell which had been salvaged from the ship by the grieving father and placed in the grounds. It was all very dramatic.

Unfortunately, another legacy of the Salomons was their peacocks. They were huge stupid birds - they made pheasants look like Mastermind contestants - and they strutted around the lawns squarking at the tops of their voices as soon as the music started. The shipwreck scene would then take place, with all the drama you can muster when most people's attention is on the birds that are drowning your voice out.

I don't know where Smith and Chumley got their tail feathers, but I know where they can find a few birds they can pluck...

Not all the rumours you hear about rabbits are true

Liitle chance of any Scrumpy-pumpy here, I'm afraid.

In fact, Scrumpy is a boy rabbit. His full name is Scrumpy Jack. His full backstory is here.

Millie Week 34: Mon 22 - Sat 27 April 1991

Returning to a theme introduced right at the beginning of the strip, Richard is missing the countryside. So in the next few weeks we're going to see him attempt to plant his own garden.

At the time I was operating a 'no parents' rule in the strip. They're an offstage presence, but never seen, much the same way that human beings are in Smith.

Garden centres in Britain, are places where you can buy pet supplies, outdoor furniture, remaindered books, Cotton Traders clothing, Christmas decorations, double glazing and scented candles, but you have to search to find any plants. The one in Tunbridge Wells I usually get my cats' food from has just opened a posh cafe in one of its greenhouses, and started a car wash service. I'm not sure there are any plants there any more...

Parp

Three hundred and sixty one strips in, and this is my first fart gag. It's boy humour - I wouldn't expect girls to understand.

Reg Parlett

In old fashioned British comics, cats used to always be drawn with bows around their necks (and for some reason, dogs tended to have clay pipes in their mouths and have a little Union Flag tied to their tails). Reg Parlett, an artist who started work in the 1920s, and who was still drawing for IPC comics when I was a kid in the 1970s, had a trademark black and white cat who would often appear as a walk on character in his strips. For example, take a look at this, from 1934.

Click to enlarge.

Jones should be happy she is keeping up such an illustrious tradition.

Behold a lady

A reference for all you Outkast fans out there. But, as Smith says, this week's strips are in answer to all those comments that call Jones and Smudge 'he'. Of course, they're just like real cats, you can't tell what gender they are at first glance, and I'm never going to draw them from the back with their tails up in anatomically correct detail, so this will have to settle the matter once and for all.

Millie Week 33: Mon 15 - Sat 20 April 1991

It's strange to think that karaoke was a fairly new thing in Britain in 1991. Karaoke nights were starting to appear in dodgy pubs all over the country, and I was doing my darndest to avoid them.

The year before, Milli Vanilli had had their Grammies taken away from them when it was discovered that neither of the guys who appeared on the album cover actually sang on their record. America insists on 'authenticity' in its pop music. Ironically, in Europe, it was never assumed that they were anything other than shop dressing for session musicians - we'd seen the same producer supply us with West German pop fronted by models a good fifteen years beforehand, in the case of the bafflingly popular Boney M. 

As for the Bohemian Rhapsody gag - I'd like to point out that Wayne's World wasn't released until the following year.

Do not adjust your set

One of my series of Friday 13th mindwibbles. This is actually the strip from the last Friday 13th (the one where they're dogs in the last frame) put through a motion blur filter, in order to end up with the 'put through a blender' effect you see here. I wonder if anyone will notice that Smith is a dog in the last frame....

Paste

Having introduced the dandelions last week, how could I resist this? Some gags just assemble themselves.

DIY

DIY - Do-It-Yourself, something which blighted many Easter holidays in my youth. I'm no good at it myself - I'm a firm believer in GAMI: Get-A-Man-In.

Hot cross buns used to be special, only appearing at Easter, but now you can buy them all year round in supermarkets, usually piled high at supermarket entrances with a two packs for a pound offer. One a penny two a penny indeed.

Simnel cake is still definitely an Easter seasonal special. Which is just as well, as I think it's possibly the most disappointing cake in the world. (Marzipan - blee!).

Millie Week 32: Mon 8th - Sat 13 April

Continuing with the post-Easter slimming theme. Once again, there is a strip missing, from Friday 12th April. I don't know what happened on that day, but occasionally the Daily Mirror would be sold out before I could get hold of a copy. Normally, you can deduce that if the papers sold out, there must have been a Royal scandal that came to light the same day. I think it's fairly safe to assume that one of the younger Royals did something spectacularly dumb on Thursday 11th...

Here's the script to the missing Friday strip. Funny I mentioned the younger Royals... Incidentally, am I the only man who preferred the rumbunctious Fergie to the insipid Diana?

1. It's Millie/Sammi argument time again, this time in the newsagents, early in the morning. Sammi's behind the counter, getting frustrated with Millie.
SAMMI: THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH YOUR WEIGHT!
MILLIE: THERE IS! I'M A BLOB!

2. And again. Millie's getting a bit morose.
SAMMI: YOU ARE NOT. YOU'RE JUST YOU SHAPED!
MILLIE: I'LL NEVER GET MY PRINCE LOOKING LIKE THIS.

3. Sammi tries to be positive about this. Millie is having none of it.
SAMMI: WHY NOT? IT WORKED FOR FERGIE!
MILLIE: DO I LOOK THE HELICOPTER PILOT TYPE?

Clang Clang Clang Clang

Is this just a British thing? My wife Linda, brought up in Japan and the US, had never heard of the theory that you could tell the time by blowing on a dandelion - the number of puffs it takes you to denude the stem of fluff supposedly tells you what o'clock it is.

Achoo!

Sometimes a drawing is just right. Jones's pose in the last frame is one of those drawings in my opinion.

Dandelions.

One of the problems with writing a cartoon strip so far in advance, as I tend to do, is that sometimes I see something that is definitely specific to a certain time of the year, which spurs a cartoon idea. I then have to hold onto it until that time of year comes around again and then use it. This weeks' strips were inspired by seeing a cloud of dandelion fluff float gracefully into the car park at work in April last year.

Mind you. I don't think dandelions are particularly fussy about when they seed. I remember rehearsing a show with the West Kent Youth Theatre in the open air one summer. It was a beautiful day, so we were using a quadrangle next to West Kent College's science block, which was downwind of a field of dandelions which had just come into seed. The wind got up and we were suddenly breathing dandelions...