In addition to carrying the weekly strips Stage School, Calculator Kid (plus spin-off puzzle feature Calculator Corner) and Mustapha Million in Whizzer and Chips' post-Whoopee-merge era (Whizzer and Chips dated 06 April 1985 until the 27 October 1990 final issue), a number of other Cheeky-related items not associated with any of the aforementioned features occasionally appeared in Whizzer and Chips across the period.
Another character making a fleeting visit to the pages of Whizzer and Chips and whose origin stretches back to Cheeky Weekly is the aged automaton known originally as 6 Million Dollar Gran. In a varied comic career spanning Cheeky Weekly and Whoopee, Gran underwent two revamps, first transitioning into a new strip entitled Robot Granny, and then seemingly becoming human in a series known as Gran's Gang. It's in her Gran's Gang incarnation that she was co-opted into a Comic Turns filler page in Whizzer and Chips dated 13 August 1988.
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| Whizzer and Chips 13 August 1988 |
The gag in which Gran is involved (top right) is a visual montage composed of images selected from 2 panels sourced from the Gran's Gang adventure which originally appeared in Whoopee dated 18 February 1984.
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| Whoopee 18 February 1984 |
Comic Turns was a reader participation feature which ran in Whoopee between issues dated 02 July 1983 and the title's final 30 March 1985 edition (after which Whoopee underwent the customary 'merge', in this case being amalgamated into Whizzer and Chips), whereby readers' joke submissions were illustrated by repurposed artwork lifted from various of the strips running in the title, while a Star Joke was accompanied by a photo of a celebrity of the time. The Comic Turns page shown above was the only time the feature appeared in Whizzer and Chips, and was mainly based on a Comic Turns from Whoopee dated 07 July 1984. I doubt whether the joke donors from 1984 received any recompense for the re-use of their witticisms 4 vears later, especially since all names had been removed from the recycled version.
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| Whoopee 07 July 1984 |
In case you're wondering, the second Star Joke referred to in the original Whoopee Comic Turns above appeared on the next page, delivered by 'gymnast and TV star Suzanne Dando' and supplied by Rodney Barrow of Shearwater.
The excision of Jimmy 'The Whirlwind' White and his daughter from the reprint due to the inclusion of a quarter-page advert for Kraft Titans meatballs, and the removal of the solicitation for reader contributions, resulted in some blank space at the top left of the rehashed Whizzer and Chips Comic Turns. This void was filled by a jalopy-based jest from the Bumpkin Billionaires which had previously featured in a Comic Turns in Whoopee dated 15 September 1984, and thus the rustic rascals delivered 2 rib-ticklers in Whizzer and Chips' Comic Turns reconstruction.
Our bucolic buddies the Bumpkins continued to amuse Whizzer and Chips readers as of the August 1988 reprinting of this Comic Turns page, but the reprint was Gran's only Whizzer and Chips appearance. Gran's fellow Comic Turnee and mechanical construct Bleep (the robot character with the 'B' on its metal carapace) had at this point most recently appeared in Whizzer and Chips dated 26 July 1986, and Bookworm (the similarly initialled human) had last graced the W&C pages as of the 13 September 1986 edition. I suppose the rather feeble gags on offer don't require prior knowledge of the figures involved in order to deliver their weak punning payloads, although I'd imagine a number of readers spent some time pondering the link between robot and octopus.
Other posts in The Whizzer and Chips Years - Random Cheeky Remnants series;
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