Millie Week 4, 27-29 Sept 1990

Click to enlarge

The Saturday detentions was my old school's nuclear option. This wasn't just being held back after school, this was being called called in on a Saturday morning to serve your time. And at my school you had to wear uniform so if you were seen walking to school on a Saturday in uniform the entire town knew you were a wrong 'un. Of course, the rules of Crippen Comprehensive had to be changed in order for this week's story to reach a satisfying conclusion.

Millie Week 4 - 24-26 Sept 1990

Click to enlarge

I used to go to a school which insisted on school uniform. In fact, I used to wear precisely the kind of blazer that Richard is wearing, usually in the same state as the last frame of the first strip. We couldn't afford new uniforms so I always wore second hand, usually two sizes too big because I was told I would 'grow into' them. Alas, I stopped at five foot four and spent most of my school years looking like David Byrne in his biiig suit.

I'm glad to say that Richard's trendy 'Madchester' outfit is never seen again after this strip.

A little technical note. You'll notice that in opening frame of each strip the first speech balloon is lower than the second. Look at all the daily Millies - it happens in each strip. What's going on there then?

The answer is pretty mundane. That was done to allow the strip's title to appear in the top left corner of the frame in the Daily Mirror. Take a look at every single Peanuts cartoon Schulz ever drew - he's working to the same constraints as well, the first speech balloon always avoids an exclusion zone.

Millie No 6.

Daily Mirror, May 5th 1990

Introducing Crippen Comprehensive. My version of a typical inner city 'bog standard' comprehensive school. Interestingly everyone is wearing the uniform of my own old school, the Skinners' School in Tunbridge Wells. Don't believe me? Take a look at this link. Compare and contrast, and marvel that apart from the addition of lots of doubtless very profitable sportswear the uniform hasn't changed one bit in 30 years! It was that kind of place, a sort of home counties Hogwarts.

Note that Millie is carrying the ultimate in chic school luggage - the Tesco carrier bag.

The graffiti in panel 3 must be the politest ever seen in an inner city. I'm not sure that Kylie Minogue was ever very big amongst the graffiti crews of South East London.

I had a tradition of naming the schools in this strip after murderers for some reason.

While we're on the subject of names, we learn Millie and Richard's surname for the first time in panel 4. Millie got her name from the musical Thoroughly Modern Millie. The original title of the strip was Secondary Modern Millie, a Secondary Modern being an archaic kind of school for children considered not bright enough for a Grammar School education. Richard was called Richard because he was sort of a Dick. The surname, Neville, came from the cricket ground in Tunbridge Wells. Little did I know there was a real Richard Neville - one of the leading lights of the underground scene in London in the 60s, and one of the defendants in the Oz trial. I must have passed under his radar. Phew.