New Andy Capp Collection Number 1: No. 1 (The Andy Capp Collection)

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Andy's and Flo's best friends are their neighbours Chalkie and Rube White. Chalkie is a hard-drinking working-class type like Andy, who can often be seen sharing a pint with him at the corner pub, but Chalkie seems mellower than Andy, and more tolerant of his wife. Rube is Flo's confidante, and the two often trade gossip over the clothesline about their husbands' latest escapades. The local vicar is also often seen. Andy despairs of his holier-than-thou attitude, as he is constantly criticising Andy for his many bad habits and vice-ridden lifestyle. He often lets his opinion be known to Flo, who agrees with his low assessment of Andy's character. I didn’t drink until I’d started doing Andy,” Smythe said. “The family was rather ashamed of me. Everyone else would be having a few pints, and I’d sit there with my tomato juice. You might say I was the white sheep of the family. Shenton, Mark (9 February 2016). "Andy Capp the Musical review at Finborough Theatre, London – 'utterly charming' ". The Stage. London . Retrieved 23 March 2016.

Cigarettes and Alcohol: Andy Capp, extensive article about Reg Smythe and the comic strip, at PlanetSlade And Smythe’s father was known to wear a cloth cap. “Even when he played football!” his son claimed. “But on Sundays he would show respect and put on a bowler hat to be posh.” Andy is a working-class figure who never actually works, living in Hartlepool, a harbour town in County Durham, in North East England. The title of the strip is a pun on the local pronunciation of "handicap"; and the surname Capp signifies how Andy's cap always covered his eyes along with, metaphorically, his vision in life. Handicap racing and handicapping, in sport and games, is part of betting, a favourite activity of Andy Capp.

Maley, Don. "Super Roads to Riches are Paved with Comics", Editor & Publisher (30 November 1968). Archived at The Internet Archive. Accessed 12 November 2018. Once I cottoned on to this facet of the strip,” he said, “about Andy being the child and Florrie being the mother — I started to draw her in a more buxom and motherly way. I also made Andy a little smaller. I did this deliberately and after a lot of thought. It works more easily for me when the pair look like mother and child. I think I’m right. Andy would be a totally unlikeable brute if he and Florrie had children to look after.”

The hilariously workshy northerner from Hartlepool, often seen stumbling home late from the pub, also inspired a West End musical, a TV series starring Likely Lads actor James Bolam and a stage play with Tim Healy. Revel Barker, who worked for the Mirror Group, reported a different origin for Andy: Smythe, he said, “told me the inspiration for the strip was a guy he saw at a Harlepool football match, which he’d attended with his father. It started to rain and the man standing next to him took off his cap and put it inside his coat. Young Reg said, ‘Mister, it’s started to rain.’ The man said he knew that. ‘But—it’s started to rain, and you’ve taken your cap off,’ said the puzzled Reg. The man looked at the youngster as if he was stupid. ‘You don’t think, do you, that I’m going to sit in the house all night wearing a wet cap.’” Demobilized in 1946, Smythe returned to Hartlepool, but, unable to find work, he soon left for London. There, after an extended period of unemployment, he found a job at the General Post Office in 1950. He also married Vera Whittaker.At some time during the night,” Smythe said, quoted by Lilley, “I did a drawing of my temporary character, and I tried to find a name for him over breakfast. I was due to present something to Bill Herbert that morning! In 1982, a musical version of Andy Capp opened in Manchester and then went on to play in London’s West End for six or seven months. And a television show began in early 1988 but was soon abandoned. Neither production achieved anything like the success of the comic strip. Why? At the height of his popularity, the comic strip equalled Charles Schulz’s Peanuts for global fame, was syndicated to 1,700 newspapers worldwide and translated into 14 different languages.

ASKED ONCE about what he thinks the appeal of his strip is, Smythe quoted a college professor, who said the strip was “beautifully observed.” And his popularity eventually spread to American shores. In 1963, Andy Capp was running in the now defunct Majorca Daily News, where a vacationing American newspaperman saw it and liked it. The newspaperman was Bob Hall, head of Publishers Syndicate. He went to London on his way home and got syndication rights for the American market. Starting September 16, 1963, Andy Capp was distributed in the U.S. by Hall’s syndicate. In the comic strip, the magic goes on. Smythe had so thoroughly and profoundly evolved the character of Andy Capp that he lives on without his creator. Like a miracle. The mindset’s exactly the same,” he said. “I can still go down to the Boilermarker’s Club and get two or three ideas just listening to the conversation.” I realized long ago,” Smythe said, “that if I gave the character my likes and dislikes, I wouldn’t have to make a conscious effort to remember anything I had ever written or drawn. I wouldn’t have to keep a reference file. Andy’s ways of looking at things are therefore, by and large, my ways of looking at things. There are exceptions to this rule, the most important of which is the fact that he drinks beer while I prefer gin and tonic. But I can afford it, and he can’t, can he?Good God,” exclaimed Smythe, “ Andy went off like a bomb! He forever disproved the theory I had long held that humor in the South is different to humor in the North. Andy was appreciated everywhere. The gags I wove around the character seemingly knew no boundaries.” This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( August 2016) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Early on, the Andy Capp strip was accused of perpetuating stereotypes about Britain's Northerners, who are seen in other parts of England as chronically unemployed, dividing their time between the living room couch and the neighbourhood pub, with a few hours set aside for fistfights at football games... But Smythe, himself a native of that region, had nothing but affection for his good-for-nothing protagonist, which showed in his work. Since the very beginning, Andy has been immensely popular among the people he supposedly skewers. [9]

In the U.S., Andy Capp appeared in only forty-five papers the first year; in the second, the strip took off, appearing in over 400 newspapers. By the 1990s, it was in nearly a thousand U.S. papers a day. When Smythe died of lung cancer June 13, 1998, Andy Capp was in 1,700 newspapers in fifty-two countries, translated into fourteen languages—proving that a drunken layabout is unaccountably popular everywhere. Reg Smythe died on 13 June 1998, but the original strip has continued. For some time, the writer and artist were uncredited, but in November 2004 the strip began to carry a credit for Roger Mahoney (artist) and Roger Kettle (writer). Circa 2011, Kettle discontinued his work on the strip and was replaced by Lawrence Goldsmith and Sean Garnett, while Mahoney continued to draw. The appearance of the characters did not change perceptibly. A statue of Andy Capp was erected in Hartlepool on 28 June 2007. It was sculpted by Jane Robbins. [14] Book collections and reprints [ edit ] United Kingdom [ edit ] Smythe grew up in Northern England under conditions that made Andy Capp seem like a kindred soul if not an alter ego. “He was my best friend yet,” Smythe once said. Growing into manhood, Smythe was often jobless for long stretches, making him sympathetic to Andy’s situation (which, in Andy’s case, is self-inflicted by preference). Almost all the characters occasionally " break the fourth wall" by delivering asides directly to the reader, or even as a very terse 'thought bubble', usually referring to Andy's low character, but more regularly by a character simply cutting their eyes to the reader in the final panel whenever something is said or done by Andy that the character finds unbelievable. The 24 October 1972 strip revealed that Andy once worked as a sign painter, but had not worked at that trade (or any other) for many years. Should anyone suggest he get a job, his response is often very terse and along the lines of 'Don't be so ridiculous!' and sometimes leads to fisticuffs.

But Bill liked the ideas and showed them to Hugh Cudlip. Mr. Cudlip also liked the idea and almost immediately started it off in the northern editions of the Mirror.” Strips into 2021 and beyond only show credits for writers Goldsmith and Garnett and continue the subtly different style.