Cheeky Weekly Star Guests in Whizzer and Chips (part 3)

Week 5 of IPC's 1979 run of Star Guest saw a third circulation-boosting attempt by a character from Cheeky Weekly in the pages of Whizzer and Chips (Whoopee! welcomed Cheeky Weekly visitors on even-numbered weeks during the promotion). On this occasion it was Cheeky himself who was welcomed into W&C to promote his own comic.

Rather surprisingly, bearing in mind that the toothy funster dominated each issue of Cheeky Weekly, it wasn't until this 5th week that he appeared in a full Star Guest strip (although he had introduced the Burpo Special Star Guest in Whoopee! dated 07 April 1979). On the other hand, the 7-day nature of Cheeky's strips in his own title may have actually delayed his appearance, as it was clearly not possible to condense a week into a single page. I suspect that anyone unfamiliar with Cheeky Weekly would find the set below, with its rather feeble jokes and brief appearances by some seemingly random characters, somewhat less than scintillating. Thus the Cheeky Weekly editor may have felt that using some of the more conventional strips to lead off the promotional visits to other titles was more likely to lure readers of Whoopee! and Whizzer and Chips into making a speculative purchase of our grinning pal's comic.

Whizzer and Chips 28 April 1979
Art: Barrie Appleby

Unfortunately Whizz-Kids and Chip-Ites didn't get to witness the wonder of a Frank McDiarmid Cheeky page (over in Cheeky Weekly the same week, Frank was sharing the Cheeky's Week artwork duties with Barrie Appleby and Mike Lacey), but Barrie did a nice job on Star Guest. It's a little odd that Cheeky felt the need to introduce himself in this strip, because he'd been appearing in Whizzer and Chips (as a member of The Krazy Gang) since that title had absorbed Krazy almost exactly a year earlier. It looks to me as though the text in Cheeky's speech balloon in the first panel on the second row has been altered - the lettering of 'Whizzer & Chips' seems different to the rest of the text. Maybe this page was originally planned to be presented in Whoopee!, explaining why Cheeky announces himself.

Unlike the preceding Star Guest features, there was no caption exhorting readers to follow Cheeky's adventures in his own comic beneath the strip, as the toothy funster and his mollusc mate handled that crucial aspect of the promotion themselves within the page. Any W&C readers thus enticed into placing a regular Cheeky Weekly order could have enjoyed a further 40 issues of Cheeky's comic before it folded and was merged into Whoopee!