The Whoopee Years – Gran

$6,000,000 Gran

Erstwhile readers of Cheeky Weekly may have been a little surprised to see their aged automaton pal, previously known as 6 Million DollarGran across her 114-issue run in the toothy funster’s title, undergo a numeric revision to become $6,000,000 Gran on her first outing in the combined Whoopee! and Cheeky. However, when they saw Pete and Pauline Potts accompanying Gran, and read Pauline’s comment (designed to bring Whoopee! readers up to speed with the concept behind the strip), “Tee, hee! It’s a giggle having a bionic robot granny!”, they would have been reassured that, aside from the tweaking of the title, the situation they had hitherto enjoyed remained unchanged (the scriptwriter’s seeming confusion regarding the contradictory terms ‘bionic’ and ‘robot’ was certainly familiar to Cheeky Weekly fans, and Gran would repeatedly be referred to as bionic during her run in $6,000,000 Gran).

Also reassuring to former Cheeky Weekly readers who had chosen to transfer their allegiances to Whoopee! and Cheeky was the continued contributions of Ian Knox, who had drawn 94 of Gran’s Cheeky Weekly adventures.

The first $6,000,000 Gran episode - Whoopee! and Cheeky 09 February 1980
Art: Ian Knox, as is all the artwork in this post

One aspect of the feature which failed to transfer into the merged comic was the portrayal of Gran’s adventures as Cheeky’s favourite TV show. Long-time fans of our grinning hero, who had been reading Cheeky Weekly since its inception, would have been aware that, like all the non-Cheeky strips in the comic’s early days, Gran’s TV appearances were framed within Cheeky’s universe. However, the various framing devices had gradually been dropped over time, with Gran’s TV existence being the last to be removed, during the summer of 1979. 

Another change as of Gran’s move to Whoopee! was the episode length – whereas the majority of 6 Million Dollar Gran stories occupied 3 pages, $6,000,000 Gran’s were, with 5 exceptions of either single or one and a half pages, reduced to 2 pages per week.

Gran’s creator, Professor Potts, appeared in her second Whoopee! and Cheeky adventure, wherein readers learned he was still employed at the ‘research lab outside town’ which, as was revealed in the first issue of Cheeky Weekly, was where the synthetic senior citizen was built. Prof Potts and his wife would feature intermittently during Gran’s $6,000,000 escapades.

Pete seemed to forget that Gran was a robot...

...as did Gran herself

A scene from Gran’s story in the issue dated 01 March appeared on the cover that week, and Gran was featured on the front page of the 02 August 1980 edition, although the image used on the cover, showing the aged automaton aboard a manually-powered (or robotically powered in Gran's case) railway trolley (or handcar), didn’t bear any relation to her story inside the comic that week, which concerned a threat to Professor Potts’ marrow.

 

Evidently Gran’s electronic brain failed her in the 09 August 1980 episode, as she was duped into freeing a prisoner from jail – clearly she didn’t recall that she was similarly deceived back in Cheeky Weekly dated 03 December 1977.

 

There was a medical mix-up in Gran’s 24 January 1981 escapade – due to a misunderstanding, the mechanical marvel was examined by a doctor who didn’t seem to notice her robotic construction.

Changes were afoot for Gran following Professor Potts’ overseas posting, as explained in Whoopee! and Cheeky dated 25 April 1981 (the old Cheeky Weekly-style title panel was reintroduced for the final 2 episodes of her '6 Million/£6,000,000' run)…

In the following issue Gran visited the Labour Exchange (forerunner of today’s Job Centre) and obtained employment as a school crossing guard, then as a dishwasher in a restaurant. Neither of these posts suited the ostensibly-geriatric jobseeker, so she returned to the employment office...

 

 

Robot Granny

Readers who were willing to risk having their sides split learned a week later that the title of the strip had changed to Robot Granny, finally acknowledging Gran’s mechanical nature (although her feats would continue to be described as bionic). Nanny would have been a more accurate description of her new role since Pete and Pauline Potts would no longer feature in her stories (despite his promise that he would return in 1983, Professor Potts and his family never appeared again), but her new charges disparagingly referred to her as Granny (and so on occasion did Lady Swankly, although whether Gran's titled employer intended it as a slight, as did the kids, is not clear). The change of Gran’s strip title happened 11 weeks before the comic title reverted from Whoopee! and Cheeky to just Whoopee!, but the Robot Granny stories continued after the reference to the toothy funster’s comic was dropped.

First Robot Granny strip -Whoopee! and Cheeky 09 May 1981

For the duration of Gran’s Robot Granny run, her previous attire of dress and fetching bonnet with flower was replaced with a nanny’s uniform.

Robot Granny in nanny uniform and still having her feats described as bionic

 

The children of Lord and Lady Swankly consisted of a baby, Jason (seen in early episodes only), and a selection of youngsters (the maximum number seen in a single panel was 11; 10 April and 05 June 1982), the most striking of whom was a girl (30 May 1981 suggests her name may have been Amelia, but 05 September 1981 identifies her as Sarah), knuckle-dragging with Popeye-style forearms, often including nautical tattoo. The Swankly brood also included identical twins, one of whom was named Mike (11 July 1981). Rather confusingly, they also had a different child named Mick who received a namecheck in the 05 September 1981 edition, along with his taller, spiky-haired brother, James (the other twin). ‘Mick’ was referred to as William in the issues dated 13 March and 11 September 1982. The corpulent child was of course called, in those less enlightened times, Tubby (31 October 1981). Fishing enthusiast Nigel was named during the course of 14 November 1981’s piscatorial plot.

$6,000,000 Gran was seen working as a dishwasher
in a restaurant (02 May 1981) but in her guise as
Robot Granny she seemed to be mis-remembering her past

The Robot Granny stories revolved around Gran’s attempts to amuse or educate the kids. Episodes often began with Lady Swankly giving Gran instructions on some aspect of the children’s care (frequently telling Gran that the youngsters, who were seen with their faces pressed against TV screens or lazing around eating grapes), needed more exercise, and robotic chaos would result. Gran’s most impressive feat during this period was relocating Mount Everest from the Himalayas to the grounds of Rottenrich Hall (19 February 1983).

A robot enjoying a slap-up feed?

The kids rarely seemed surprised when their nanny demonstrated her superhuman abilities, nor did they enquire how she was able to perform them. As far as readers knew, the kids assumed their governess was human.

The 27 February 1982 story concerned Gran’s inclusion in the kids’ game of hide and seek. The aged automaton correctly surmised that a couple of her charges were concealed beneath the dining table, but on lifting the furniture she smashed the crockery. The bottom half of the second page consisted of a puzzle entitled Help Gran! - readers were challenged to pair the corresponding halves of a selection of shattered cups and plates.

How a robot became eligible for a pension was never explained

Quizmaster was a puzzle feature, hosted each week by one of the Whoopee! stars. The robotic wrinkly introduced the half-page of brain teasers in Whoopee! dated 30 April 1983.

Gran's Gang

  

Whoopee underwent another merge as of the 02 July 1983 issue, this time welcoming survivors from IPC’s Wow! In the same issue, Gran’s strip was given a further overhaul, becoming ‘Gran’s Gang’ and being reduced from 2 pages per week to one. The first episode in the new format saw Gran accompany some of the Swankly offspring to a disco. The leader of the group of youths who frequented the youth club objected to the presence of the apparently aged Gran. Our robotic heroine, seriously feeling the funk, donned a wig and demonstrated some highly energetic dance moves. The youth gang leader, feeling his position threatened by Gran’s prowess on the dance floor, still refused to admit her to his troupe, and the episode ended with Gran vowing to start her own gang.

The first Gran's Gang episode

  

The second Gran’s Gang story showed her recruiting elderly local residents Shamus, Harriet, Henry and a further four un-named individuals of advanced age, and announcing the creation of Gran’s Gang. However, as with the Swankly kids, the names of the members of Gran’s gang weren’t always consistent from issue to issue.

Subsequent episodes depicted the gang of youths (still numbering among them some of the Swankly kids, most noticeably the mightily-forearmed Sarah, who reverted to Amelia in the 05 November 1983 episode) challenging Gran’s Gang to various activities, on each occasion expecting an easy win (when issuing challenges, a gauntlet was often literally thrown to the ground). Needless to say, Gran’s Gang always prevailed. For example when competing against the youngsters in the bowling alley, the elderly mob were able to call on their years of experience on the bowling green in order to win. However, Gran no longer exhibited any superhuman abilities (in the 25 August 1984 edition she’s unable to break a stick of seaside rock).

It would appear that Gran’s Gang stars a revised, human version of Gran, since in the 20 October 1984 comic she persuades a museum attendant to lend her a vintage omnibus to replace the modern coach she, her pals and the youngsters were travelling in until it broke down, saying "Oh, go on, George! We were at school together, after all!" George replies "Okey-dokey, matey! Seeing it’s for you!". The youngsters' back-story also seems to have undergone a revision as Lady Swankly was only seen in the first episode and in the 17 November 1984 story William says his dad is a computer engineer.

In later Gran's Gang stories the challenges were replaced with various inter-generational conflicts, although the oldsters would sometimes help out their youthful counterparts and vice-versa.

For her Gran’s Gang appearances, Gran didn’t revert to the outfit she wore in her Six Million and $6,000,000 Gran years – she continued to wear the nanny’s uniform she had sported during the Robot Granny run.

Gran was clearly no longer living at Rottenrich Hall

  

In the 29 October 1983 story, the kids beat Gran’s gang to the newsagent and buy the last copies of Whoopee. A cheesed-off Gran and her elderly chums visit IPC’s headquarters at King’s Reach Tower (which of course is depicted with a huge Whoopee sign, visible across London, on the exterior of the top floor). In the Whoopee office, where Pa Bumpkin and Smiler can be seen posing for the comic’s artists, Gran explains that her group consists of Whoopee’s oldest readers, yet they missed that week’s issue. The gentleman at the Readers’ Complaints desk hands out not only that week’s edition but some advance copies for several weeks ahead. The number of kids who subsequently contacted IPC pretending to be of advanced years and trying to blag some free comics remains open to speculation.

Horological humour was the subject of The Gran's Gang story in Whoopee dated 30 March 1985, as the senior citizens and their youthful opposite numbers compared their preferred timepieces, while the centre pages informed readers that as from the following week their comic was being merged into Whizzer and Chips. Sweeny Toddler was on hand to introduce the Whizzer and Chips stars who were to be included in the merged title but, as was the standard practice, to ensure that the maximum number of erstwhile Whoopee readers bought a copy of the following week's merged comic, there was no mention of which of the Whoopee crew were to transfer into the amalgamated title. Gran fans spent an anxious week wondering if their robotic chum was among the Whoopee funny folk selected for salvation, but were disappointed to find that she had failed to make the transfer. Nevertheless Gran, through all her various guises across Cheeky Weekly and various Whoopee merges, had enjoyed a creditable run of just under 7 and a half years, much of her success no doubt due to Ian Knox's often grotesque, energetic artwork.

$6,000,000 Gran ran for 60 consecutive issues, 09 February 1980 to 02 May 1981 (publication of Whoopee! and Cheeky was suspended for four weeks in May/June 1980 due to an industrial dispute, and a week after returning to newsagents' shelves, a two-week issue cover-dated 21st - 28th June 1980 was published, so the comic missed 5 weeks during this period). All $6,000,000 Gran strips, were drawn by Ian Knox. All the stories bar 5 were 2 pages long - three issues contained single page stories and in a further two editions $6,000,000 Gran shared the second of her pages with half-page IPC promotions.

Robot Granny ran from 09 May 1981 to 25 June 1983, but was absent from 6 issues during the period, so the total episodes amounted to 106. Nigel Edwards and Barrie Appleby each deputised on one occasion for regular artist Ian Knox. Thus Ian delivered 104 stories, 16 of which covered a page and a half *, with the remainder running to 2 pages, and Nigel and Barrie's contributions were one page each.

* Please note I have chosen to record the Help Gran! puzzle on the second page of her 27 February 1982 escapade as a separate feature from Gran's strip - it has the look of a filler to me and I don't think it sprang from the nimble nib of Mr K - so that week's story is among the total of page and a half episodes listed above.

Gran's Gang first appeared in the issue dated 02 July 1983 and concluded in the final Whoopee dated 30 March 1985, but didn't appear in 5 editions during its run, so the total episode count is 87. All were single-pagers and drawn by Ian Knox.

Thus Gran was present in all but 11 issues of Whoopee from 09 February 1980 to 30 March 1985, making a Gran(d) total of 253 appearances (256 if we include her cover spots and Quizmaster outing).

Profile - 6 Million Dollar Gran

Readers who have been following this blog for some time will be aware that this series of Profile posts examines the named characters who appeared alongside the toothy funster in his daily ‘Cheeky’s Week’ pages. Cheeky Weekly’s USP (at least in its early days) was that the Cheeky elements acted as framing devices for all the other features in the comic. A number of the characters from the non-Cheeky features were shown to share the same universe as our grinning pal. For example, Skateboard Squad and Calculator Kid were seen on the Cheeky pages a number of times.

Other features had a metafictional relationship to Cheeky’s world; James Bold was the hero of a series of novels (and later a film) which Cheeky enjoyed, and Elephant on the Run was a strip in our grinning pal’s favourite funny paper, the Mystery Comic.

In some cases Cheeky Weekly blurred the reality boundary by incorporating fictional-from-Cheeky’s-perspective characters into the Cheeky pages; Paddywack was initially presented as the subject of a cartoon strip drawn by Doodle Doug, but was later seen at the cinema during a Saturday morning pictures sequence, and on one occasion the titular pachyderm from Elephant on the Run, plus his plastic-clad pursuer, turned up in Cheeky’s Week. Were these examples of the scriptwriter deliberately being playful with the whole concept of the ‘reality’ depicted in comics, or rather the result of lapses in concentration? You decide.

  

6 Million Dollar Gran, initially presented as the robotic star character in Cheeky’s favourite humorous sci-fi/fantasy TV show, made one transition across the fictionality interface into Cheeky’s world. In that particular case, I think we can excuse the comic’s creators for what some may consider to be a gaffe, since Gran’s sole Cheeky’s Week appearance occurred in the final issue of the toothy funster’s comic, during a sequence in which all those funny folk who would be transferring into Whoopee! the following week were shown meeting their new comic colleagues, and therefore the scriptwriter had no option other than to include the synthetic senior citizen. Additionally, the depiction of Gran as a TV character ceased following the 14 July 1979 edition of Cheeky Weekly (Gran’s being the final framing device to be dropped from the comic), and her former TV star status was never mentioned in Whoopee! so it was simpler to assign her to the same level of reality as her Cheeky chums in the final issue of Cheeky's mighty, if short-lived, title.

Gran's non-speaking role in the final Cheeky Weekly
Art: Frank McDiarmid

Any blog readers cross-referencing to the list of Cheeky's Week Characters will be understandably puzzled by the discrepancy between this post's mention of Gran's single appearance and that list's total of 5 appearances by the robotic senior citizen. The difference exists because the Cheeky's Week Characters list includes in the total Cover Features containing the relevant character, whereas the figures shown in these Profile posts excludes Cover Features. The description Cover Feature is one I use for elements that appear on page 1 but which are not comic strips (What a Cheek and its replacement Cheeky's Week were the main cover strips).

Gran's front page appearances that I have classified as Cover Features are on the 12 November 1977, 29 July 1978, 02 September 1978 and 21 July 1979 issues.

It's now apparent that my assignment of Cover Feature is not really adequate - I should have created an additional category called something like Cover Feature - Cheeky-Related, which would have meant that the single-panel Cheeky gag covers would have been identified separately from the cover features such as those listed above. Maybe I'll get round to reclassifying those elements one day.

Dollars and Sense

From the very first of his strips, Mustapha Million's adventures were introduced by a caption fashioned to read Mustapha Mi££ion. In all the references I have made to this strip over the years I have chosen to type Million rather than the jokey construction used in the comic because;

• Typing Mi££ion requires a bit more thinking about than the conventional spelling. Forcing my fingers to formulate the curious 'Shift and 3' configuration that will cause the iconic currency-denoting symbol to appear on screen slows my words-per-minute count which is already pretty poor due to my two-digit keyboard manipulation. Thus I choose to use the conventional spelling to save a bit of time.
• While it looks ok in the comic, Mi££ion just looks very odd in whatever font blogger defaults to, causing it to look a bit like Miffion.

In the first episode we learned that Mustapha had inadvertently struck oil in his homeland as a result of over-enthusiastic hammering on a tent peg while setting up camp in the desert. Although his oleaginous wealth didn't originate in the UK, the use of pound signs in the Mustapha title frame was entirely appropriate because our moneyed mate was, for the duration of his comic adventures, living in good old Blighty and therefore his frequent distribution of large amounts of cash (no anti-money-laundering regulations to worry about in those days) was very likely mostly transacted in sterling.

Cheeky Weekly was of course home to another character whose title included a seven-figure allusion - 6 Million Dollar Gran. I always assumed Gran was based in the UK, but that Professor Potts' pioneering robotics research was funded by the US, thus giving rise to the title. Clearly I'm thinking far too deeply about this as '6 Million Dollar Gran' was just a play on the 6 Million Dollar Man TV series and I doubt whether the creator gave much thought as to why Gran was valued in a currency other than that of the UK. Nevertheless, the synthetic senior citizen's title caption read 6 Million Dollar Gran throughout her Cheeky Weekly career. However...

Someone made a bit of a slip-up when composing the cover of Cheeky Weekly dated 01 September 1979, as the banner at the top of the front page reads 'Bionic Action with 6 Mi££ion Dollar Gran - Inside!'. Apart from the fact that they used the wrong currency symbol, they also forgot to take account of the GBP/USD exchange rate. This online historical converter suggests that on 22 October 1977 (cover date of the first Cheeky Weekly and my presumed date of her dollar valuation) a more accurate description would have been Three Mi££ion, Three Hundred and Eighty-Eight Thousand and Fifteen Pounds and Ninety One Pence Gran.

Of course, setting aside the exchange rate issue, if they'd spelt it with the more appropriate dollar signs that would have made the title read '6 Mission Dollar Gran' which doesn't make sense.

Goodbye Whoopee (and Gran and Paddywack).

Art: Tom Paterson

By the late 1970s comic publishers had largely abandoned the custom of announcing a title's demise with a front-cover banner reading 'Great news inside, pals!'. Although a merging of two comics was inevitably given a positive spin, more subtle methods were employed on the front page to prepare readers for the imminent termination of their funny paper.

Thus readers of the 30 March 1985 issue of Whoopee could have been forgiven for missing the significance of Sweeny Toddler's 'Me's got to fly – tell you all about it inside' front page message, tying in as it did with the kite element of that week's Sweeny story. However, the cold facts were revealed on the centre pages – after a respectable 11 year presence on the newsagents' shelves Whoopee, which had lost its exclamation mark when it absorbed Wow! in 1983, had reached the end of its run and would be merged into Whizzer and Chips the following week.

Whoopee 30 March 1985

At this point it was 5 years since Cheeky Weekly had failed and been merged into Whoopee. Surprisingly, despite the subsequent incorporation of Wow! into Whoopee, the majority of the strips to transfer from the toothy funster's comic had survived to Whoopee's final issue in one form or another.

Let's have a look at their pages from this final issue of Whoopee...

Stage School, something of a latecomer to Cheeky Weekly where it commenced in July 1979, was one of the strips fortunate to make the transition to Whoopee and it continued, without lapsing into reprint, to feature on 2 pages every week up to the final issue...

Art: Robert Nixon

Although Stage School did appear in Whizzer and Chips, it can't really be said that the feature survived the second merge, as the strip made just two appearances, in the 20 April 1985 and 13 July 1985 issues of Whizzer and Chips including Whoopee, both in the Chips section.

6 Million Dollar Gran had undergone a number of alterations since being welcomed into Whoopee. The first change was the subtle amendment of the strip's title from 6 Million Dollar Gran to $6000,000 Dollar Gran as of her first Whoopee appearance. The first major overhaul came when the synthetic senior citizen was hired as nanny to a group of kids and the strip was renamed Robot Granny. The second big change saw Gran became leader of a group of pensioners when the strip was retitled Gran's Gang, from which point her robotic nature was no longer apparent, and her weekly adventures were reduced to a single page.

Art: Ian Knox

Gran was another casualty of the merger.

Mustapha Million continued to appear until the final Whoopee, although he had reverted to reprints of his Cheeky Weekly exploits as of April 1984. On occasion the reprints were edited down from two pages to a single page. At first these reprints featured retouched speech balloons, squared off to match the Whoopee style, but later these alterations were dropped, as can be seen from this reprint in Whoopee's final issue...

Art: Reg Parlett
Reprint from Cheeky Weekly dated 03 June 1978

Mustapha's strips in Whizzer and Chips commenced with a page containing a single row of new art recounting how he came by his wealth, underneath which was a cut-down reprint of his adventure from Cheeky Weekly dated 03 February 1979. The reprints continued until new adventures of the middle-eastern moneybags began in February 1986, drawn by Robert Nixon before artwork duties were handed over to Barry Glennard and then Frank McDiarmid.

Calculator Kid had appeared throughout Whoopee's post-Cheeky-merge run, and had generated a spin-off, Calculator Corner (although absent from the final Whoopee).

Art: Terry Bave

In the case of Charlie Counter and his silicon-chipped sidekick, there is no conclusion to his adventures in the final Whoopee, as he survived the merge and continued to appear in Whizzer and Chips, as did Calculator Corner for a while. Eventually, however, Calculator Kid lapsed into reprints of his Cheeky Weekly adventures before the strip was dropped.

Paddywack: Jack Clayton
Bleep!: Jim Barker
Cheeky: Frank McDiarmid
Here Is The News: Ed McHenry

Paddywack was by this time reduced to a single row of panels on Whoopee's Quick Strips page, as was Cheeky, whose circumstances had been considerably reduced since he featured on four pages per week in his own comic section immediately after Cheeky Weekly merged into Whoopee. Paddywack didn't survive the merge into Whizzer and Chips. Cheeky didn't survive as a solo strip, but he continued to appear in Whizzer and Chips as a member of The Krazy Gang, who had been appearing there since Krazy merged into it way back in April 1978.

In addition to the strips above, there were additional appearances by ex-Cheeky Weekly characters in the final Whoopee...

Stage School Teacher  appears
on the Comic Turns page

Art: J Edward Oliver

In an attempt to lure any loyal Whoopee readers reluctant to make the transition to Whizzer and Chips, the final Whoopee contained the first part of a competition that would continue in W&C the following week.

So how were the readers of Whizzer and Chips informed of the imminent arrival of the Whoopee refugees? Well, there wasn't anything on the cover of the pre-merge issue to make readers suspect something significant was in the offing.

Art: Mike Lacey

Whizzer and Chips had at this point existed for 15 years, since the beginning styling itself as '2 comics in one', with the Chips section appearing within Whizzer. Readers were encouraged to separate the two comics and there was friendly rivalry between those readers who preferred the Whizzer section (referred to as Whizz-Kids and led by Sid of Whizzer's Sid's Snake cover strip), and those who favoured the Chips section (dubbed Chip-ites, who followed Shiner, the cover star of Chips).

Apart from some cryptic references on Sid and Shiner's pages, it wasn't until the centre spread that the fateful news was announced, in a nice set by Frank McDiarmid where the Whizz-Kid and Chip-ite leaders, in a process familiar from team games in all school playgrounds, selected their recruits from among the new arrivals. The two Whoopee survivors who had originated in Cheeky Weekly and became weekly features in their new home were both to become Chip-ites.

The above strip was not entirely honest about the number of inductees - it neglected to mention Bleep who transferred into the Chips section the following week (this omission was presumably to allow an even amount of divvying up by Sid and Shiner). Also not mentioned explicitly was the Calculator Corner puzzle feature that moved into Chips along with Calculator Kid.

I'll be examining the post-Cheeky Weekly careers of Cheeky, Gran, Stage School, Mustapha Million, Paddywack and Calculator Kid in more detail at a later date.

P.S. Any Family Trees fans keen to see more of 'The Saplings' who were introduced in Whoopee dated 24 November 1984 will be disappointed to learn that despite a caption promising they would return, the tiny trees were never seen again.

Gran Toddles In

The issue of Whoopee and Wow! displayed below joined the array of comics vying for attention on newsagents' counters in August 1984. Four and a half years after Cheeky Weekly had been merged into it, reference to the toothy funster's comic had long since been dropped from Whoopee's cover, not least because another failed title, Wow!, had been absorbed just over a year before this issue appeared, and thus gained the companion title slot.

However, all the survivors who had jumped ship as a holed-beneath-the-waterline Cheeky Weekly sank into comic history continued to appear in Whoopee and Wow! at this time, although their fortunes had varied considerably as the post-Cheeky Weekly months progressed;

• Stage School were still occupying two pages a week, undiminished from their days in the toothy funster's comic.
• 6 Million Dollar Gran had metamorphosed into a seemingly non-robotic role as the leader of Gran's Gang, a single page strip that was something of a come-down after her 3-pages-a-week Cheeky Weekly heyday.
• Mustapha Million continued to appear but had recently reverted to reprints of his Cheeky Weekly adventures.
• Charlie and Calc's Calculator Kid escapades continued (not reprints), and had in fact generated a spin-off strip, Calculator Corner.
• Paddywack persisted with his brand of bumbling buffoonery. 
• Ironically, Cheeky himself had suffered the worst ignominy, and from being the star of his own comic was now reduced to a single row of panels near the rear of Whoopee and Wow!

The cover of Whoopee and Wow! dated 18 August 1984 featured a surprise appearance by Cheeky Weekly's synthetic senior citizen, Gran, making a cameo appearance in the Sweeny Toddler strip...

Sweeny Toddler: art Tom Paterson
Family Trees: art Robert Nixon

This looks a bit odd to me; Gran is the only character in the strip to display a shadow on her body, and casts no shade on the ground to her right. Also her unspecified 'Yak Yak', and indeed her very presence, seems to be entirely ignored by the other characters in the frame. As you can see below, Gran plays no further role in the strip. Strange. Maybe the aged automaton's presence was meant to suggest that Sweeny's Great Grandpa was a member of Gran's Gang. 

For the benefit of anyone puzzling over the teaser in the Family Trees cover appearance...

Art: Robert Nixon

Frank McDiarmid's Boy Boss

Lew Stringer's latest look at a Christmas comic focuses on 1984's festive Whoopee! and includes Frank McDiarmid's Boy Boss story from that issue.  Despite it being the season of goodwill, BB is having his usual run-in with miserly accountant Jasper Ferret.

Also on display from the same issue is Ian Knox's Gran's Gang, which features Cheeky Weekly's very own 6 Million Dollar Gran, in her second Whoopee! regeneration (the first being her transition from 6 Million Dollar Gran to Robot Granny).

Profile - Paddywack

Paddywack, in appearing to occupy two levels of reality within the comic, qualifies to appear in a Feature post, and a Profile post.

For an explanation of the dual nature of Paddywack's relationship with Cheeky's universe, and a suggested resolution of this apparent dichotomy, see the Paddywack Feature post.

Paddywack appeared only once in Cheeky's Week, during the cinema interval in the issue dated 02 September 1978.

Paddywack made a further appearance outside of his own strip, when he was one of the guests at Pete and Pauline Potts' party in the 6 Million Dollar Gran story in Cheeky Weekly dated 06 October 1979.

The Features - 6 Million Dollar Gran

A spoof on the popular TV show of the period, The Six Million Dollar Man, 6 Million Dollar Gran appeared in all but 3 issues of Cheeky Weekly.  In the first episode, robotics expert Professor Potts unveiled his new creation, an android 'so lifelike that it has cost six million dollars to make'.  Immediately after presenting the robot to his colleagues at the World Authority for Scientific Projects (WASP), an attempt was made to steal this technological wonder, but the robot overcame its would-be abductors.

Fearing his synthetic humanoid may fall into enemy hands, Potts made the questionable decision to take the robot home to his family.  However, in a cunning ruse to disguise its true nature, the 'metal masterpiece' was dressed as an elderly woman, and Potts' children, Pete (referred to as Billy in the first episode) and Pauline (whose hairstyle was different in subsequent adventures), adopted the robot as their granny.

Any readers keen to find out more about the mysterious WASP organisation were to be disappointed, as that aspect of the story was never mentioned again (although the Prof was seen working in a laboratory in the 22 September 1979 issue).  Instead, most of the scripts just played with the idea of a deceptively powerful old lady who often foiled felons or carried out rescues.  Early episodes were introduced by a caption explaining that Gran is a robot, but after the 6th instalment such captions appeared only sporadically, sometimes just describing our heroine as a 'super-gran'.  The captions ceased entirely after the 31 December 1977 issue.  New readers were left to work out for themselves what was going on as Gran's true nature was rarely mentioned from then on, and in some of the strips even Gran seems to forget she is not human.

For the majority of the issues of Cheeky Weekly, the page preceding the 6 Million Dollar Gran feature would show Cheeky rushing home to watch Gran's latest adventure on TV.  Gran appeared most regularly following the Sunday page (39 times), with 37 appearances after the Sunday evening page (the Sunday evening feature came to an end in the issue dated 23 September 1978 - in the following issue Cheeky told us that Gran's programme had been moved to a mid-day slot), and 10 after Monday.  Near the end of the comic's run, as the feature continued its trajectory towards the rear pages of the comic, Gran wouldn't follow directly from a Cheeky's Week page.

Until Cheeky Weekly dated 06 May 1978, the final panel of each 6 Million Dollar Gran story showed Cheeky looking at a caption on his TV which read  'End of Episode XX. Tune in again next week', but in the following stories the episode number was omitted and sometimes the caption would just read 'The End'.  The final time that Cheeky was shown to be heading home to watch Gran was in the 30 June 1979 comic.  As mentioned above, in subsequent issues, the Gran page wouldn't follow directly from a Cheeky's Week page, most regularly following Calculator Kid.  From the issue dated 21 July 1979 the final-panel-showing-Cheeky-watching-TV idea was abandoned, and the strip would fill the whole of the final page of each episode.  The final reference to Gran being a TV show, the title panel which showed a TV screen, was revamped on 15 December 1979.  In this issue the original title was replaced by a simple, unadorned caption and the new style of title panel continued (albeit with the traditional snow-covered variant in the 29 December 1979 issue) for the remaining 7 issues until Cheeky Weekly's demise.

In the 19 January 1980 edition, Gran's usual strip was replaced with a spot the difference puzzle based on a panel lifted from her story in the issue dated 17 March 1979.

Mustapha Million is seen watching an episode of 6 Million Dollar Gran on TV in the first panel of his strip in the comic dated 29 April 1978.

I suspect that the Gran strip which was prepared for the 1978 Christmas issue of Cheeky Weekly (one of the issues that failed to appear due to industrial action) was eventually published in the 1980 Cheeky Annual on pages 9-11.  In the annual, It seems to me that the wording of Gran’s first speech balloon has been changed to refer to a new year party, but Gran brings a giant Christmas cracker. Also, a Jim Petrie rendition of Cheeky has been substituted in the final panel, where in Cheeky Weekly we would see Cheeky looking at a ‘The End’ caption on the TV.

6 Million Dollar Gran was the only feature in Cheeky Weekly to regularly run to 3 page stories, although not all the episodes were that lengthy.  84 episodes were 3-pagers, 27 were 2-pagers, and 3 stories completed on a single page.

Gran's adventures in Cheeky Weekly were drawn by Ian Knox (94 episodes), Nigel Edwards (18 episodes) and Mike Lacey (2 episodes).  In the Mustapha Million strip in the comic dated 29 April 1978 (as mentioned above), Reg Parlett draws Gran on TV in the first panel.

Despite it being made clear in the first episode and subsequent introductory captions that Gran was a robot, on several occasions in the comic the aged automaton's fantastic abilities were referred to as bionic (examples here, here and here). This was clearly an attempt to attract fans of the popular TV show that the strip spoofed, which was often referred to by the public as The Bionic Man. Why, then, didn't the scriptwriter just make Gran bionic in the first place? One online dictionary defines 'bionic' thusly;

Having anatomical structures or physiological processes that are replaced or enhanced by electronic or mechanical components.

 

TV's 6 Million Dollar Man gained his electromechanical upgrades as a result of injuries suffered in a terrible accident. Having a sweet old granny lose some limbs or vital organs or otherwise undergo ground-breaking surgery was clearly not really an option for a humour strip aimed at children, so Gran was envisaged as entirely synthetic.

Gran survived the merge at the end of Cheeky Weekly's run, transferring into Whoopee in February 1980, and the character featured regularly until Whoopee itself was subsumed into Whizzer and Chips in April 1985, although as from Whoopee! and Cheeky dated 09 May 1981 the strip was retitled Robot Granny.  Following Whoopee's absorption of Wow in July 1983, the title of the strip was again changed, this time to Gran's Gang.  See here for more info and examples of Gran's post-Cheeky Weekly incarnations.

In the special skateboard issue of Cheeky Weekly dated 04 February 1978, someone resembling Gran appears in the Skateboard Squad strip as one of the spectators watching the Squad give a display of their boarding skills.  This cannot actually be Gran, since in Cheeky's universe (in which the Squad also exist), Gran is a fictional character from a TV show.  We must therefore assume that a member of the crowd is wearing a Gran mask, possibly as a publicity gimmick by the TV company, or maybe the wearer of the mask is a Gran fan. A little harder to explain is the 6 Million Dollar Gran story in Cheeky Weekly dated 06 October 1979, in which the Potts kids invite the synthetic senior citizen to their party. At the end of the strip, Pete and Pauline are delighted to welcome "Our chums from Cheeky Weekly" (including Cheeky, Baker's Boy and Mustapha Million among others) to join the festivities. Although, as mentioned above, Cheeky had not been shown heading home to watch Gran on TV since the 30 June 1979 issue, and the feature had not ended with the toothy funster watching a 'The End' caption on TV since 14 July 1979, so maybe we're supposed to infer that the nature of Gran's relationship with the Cheeky universe had changed by this stage.

Gran also appeared on page 31 of the final issue of Cheeky Weekly dated 02 February 1980, as those characters who would survive the merge with Whoopee! met their new comic chums.  I think we can allow a little license in this instance, since Gran had not been depicted as a TV programme in Cheeky Weekly since July the previous year, and anyway the editor had little option than to include Gran alongside the other characters who would transfer into Whoopee!  However, having said that, Paddywack, whose ambiguous position in Cheeky's universe mirrors Gran's, (being a fictitious character who made one appearance in Cheeky's world) also survived the merge yet did not appear in that meeting between refugees from Cheeky Weekly and their Whoopee! Pals.  Cheeky Weekly remained inconsistent to the end.

Gran - The Whoopee Years

                                                                                                                                                         

Feature	First Appearance	Final Appearance	Total Issues	Total Issues Missed In Run	Page History
6 Million Dollar Gran	22-Oct-77	02-Feb-80	114	3	3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,13,14,15,19,24,25

Issues Missed In Run

02-Dec-78

09-Dec-78

19-Jan-80

                                                                                                                                   

Feature	Artist	Number of Issues	First Appearance	Final Appearance
6 Million Dollar Gran	Ian Knox	94	22-Oct-1977	26-Jan-1980
6 Million Dollar Gran	Nigel Edwards	18	25-Mar-1978	02-Feb-1980
6 Million Dollar Gran	Mike Lacey	2	24-Jun-1978	22-Jul-1978

Gran - The Whoopee Years