My trawl through the pages of Whoopee!'s 1981 Christmas issue in search of the Cheeky Weekly survivors now arrives at pages 18 and 19, occupied by a character called Robot Granny. This is of course the aged automaton who Friends of Cheeky first knew as 6 Million Dollar Gran. On her transfer to Whoopee!, Gran's strips were for some reason given a numerically-focused change of title and she appeared as $6000,000 Gran, occasionally reverting to her former title, as was the case in her final outing before being given a more radical re-titling as of Whoopee! dated 09 May 1981, in which the synthetic senior citizen's strips were re-branded Robot Granny (not the last time her strip would undergo a title change). This new stage in Gran's career saw her become a nanny employed by Lord and Lady Swankly to look after their kids at Rottenrich Hall, which is where we find her on Christmas Eve, 1981...
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Whoopee! 26 December 1981
Art: Ian Knox |
As it's Christmas I'm not going to complain at the two references to Gran being bionic. Her debut in Cheeky Weekly made it clear that she was a robot but despite this she was often described as bionic during her run in the toothy funster's comic. It's surprising that the mistake was still being made when such descriptions of her attributes contradicted the strip's new title
Gran's abilities suit her to the oft-used 'Helping Santa out of Trouble' plot.
Like the Aberdeen gag...still very good this era for Granny...my era!
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Ian Knox was living in Aberdeen at the time. When this Chit-Chat page was printed he apparently lived in Belfast but maybe he'd moved by 1981.
DeleteNiblet, I have just got hold of the Dummy copy. I will be posting an article about it over on nothingbutafan either today or tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteExcellent - I'll keep an eye out for it and will post a link here when it's up.
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