The Cut-Out Features – Cheeky's Cut-Out Comedy Catalogues

As I’ve mentioned before, some cut-out features were used as marketing tools, running simultaneously across IPC’s titles, such as 1978’s mini-comics or the same year’s spotter books promotion. Occasionally, however, a title would mount a go-it-alone cut-out feature such as the Cheeky's Cut-Out Comedy Catalogue series which commenced in the toothy funster’s comic dated 17 November 1979.

Cheeky Weekly 10 November 1979

The front and back pages of the first
Comedy Catalogue, Cheeky Weekly17 November 1979

Cheeky Weekly's final cut-out feature consisted of 11 comedy catalogues, all of which presented a collection of gags in text form accompanied by a scattering of graphics. Each catalogue contained jokes around a particular theme; 10 of them collected jokes pertaining to a particular character from the Cheeky’s Week supporting cast, and the remaining catalogue featured Christmas jokes. Each catalogue occupied 2 Cheeky Weekly pages (all the gag collections were printed in monochrome on pages 13 and 14), and readers were invited to snip out the pages, rotate them through 90 degrees, fold, then assemble into a 4-page anthology of corny gags.

 

I suspect that the real purpose behind the joke booklets was to cheaply fill some pages of the toothy funster’s comic by recycling a selection of Cheeky's gags from earlier issues, as the title wound down to its eventual cancellation after the 02 February 1980 issue. Cheeky Weekly had been featuring recycled material since its first edition, but in the comic's prime the reprints had been incorporated into the toothy funster's universe in an imaginative way. As the comic entered its final months a more cynical approach appears to have been adopted as some seemingly random old strips were dusted off and bunged in to fill up some space. In the 06 October 1979 issue Ringer Dinger was conscripted to revisit some of his earlier telephonic escapades, although Ringer was brought back from the comics graveyard only 3 times. Introduced in the same issue in which the Catalogues began, a resurrected Soggy the Sea Monster began a run of recycled adventures. What all these reprints had in common was that they were sourced from other IPC titles. The Comedy Catalogues saw the editor sustaining an ailing Cheeky Weekly by preying on its own archive and, by not presenting them in their original cartoon form, subvert IPC's apparent rule that reprinted material had to be at least a few years old.

The Comedy Catalogues appeared in every issue from 17 November 1979 to the penultimate edition dated 26 January 1980. The first gag booklet featured Knock-Knock Door jokes, commencing with what was described as Cheeky's 'first ever Knock-Knock joke', and indeed it was, from way back in the debut issue of Krazy.

So the question is, of course, were all the jokes in the catalogues in fact sourced from earlier issues? Readers of this blog will know that I am assiduous in my research but even for me, scouring the pages of every issue for every joke from every catalogue is too arduous a task. Instead I chose to focus on the Mr Chips booklet since, of the 10 Cheeky's Week characters featured, Mr Chips appeared in the fewest issues (21).

Here's a list of the Mr Chips gags as they appeared in the Cheeky's Week strips. I have paraphrased the jokes in the interests of brevity. Cheeky's carpentry-related ripostes (or those of Snail) are also included. The final column indicates whether the joke(s) featured in the Mr Chips Catalogue.

 

Issue Date	Setup	Payoff	In Catalogue?
28-Jul-79	A carpenter’s favourite TV show?	Plankety-Plank	Y
04-Aug-79	Any good as a joiner?	Joined the tennis club, joined the bridge club	N
11-Aug-79	What do you get if you put a sail onto a carpentry tool?	Plane-sailing	N
18-Aug-79	A firm who makes planks wants me to become a director	Offered me a seat on the board	N
25-Aug-79	Tired of people asking me to give them bits of wood	You’d think it grows on trees	Y
01-Sep-79	Roof-makers favourite chocolates?	Rafter Eights	N
08-Sep-79	Why is a short plank like a fed-up pygmy?	Both a little bored	N
15-Sep-79	Had to get my teeth checked	Mine are ok but my saw needs 3 fillings	Y
22-Sep-79	Your son looks like you	He’s a chips off the old block	Y
29-Sep-79	What kind of wood is made from fried potatoes?	Chipboard (sorry for my plank expression)	N/Y
06-Oct-79	Asked headmaster to hold a nail while I hammered it	I hit the head right on the nail	N
13-Oct-79	How do you get trees to the sawmill?	Along a trunk road (or if by train along a branch line)	N
20-Oct-79	What would a cowboy carpenter feel like after a long day?	Saddle saw (you are an old chiseller)	Y/Y
03-Nov-79	The Prime Minister asked me to help form the government	I’m a good cabinet-maker	Y
10-Nov-79	Scouts always have a carpenter on their staff	They’re good with knots	Y
17-Nov-79	The carpenters’ football team played a team from the factory where they make our tools	They hammered us (the scores were level at the start)	Y/N
24-Nov-79	Thinking of doing a double act with Mr Haddock	We’ll call ourselves Fish and Chips (or The Carpenters or Hinge and Haddock)	N
15-Dec-79	Why is a carpenter at home chatting to kings and queens?	He works with rulers every day	Y
05-Jan-80	I’m resolving to stop telling jokes	I’ll make my mind a complete plank	N
12-Jan-80	Why is a carpenter superstitious?	He’s always touching wood	N
26-Jan-80	Spent a week replacing floorboards and now the woman tells me she doesn’t like the colour	Completely floored me	N

And here is the full catalogue, indicating whether each of the gags was sourced from Cheeky's Week.

There are of course more jokes in the Catalogue (42) than there were in the comic so it's no surprise that a considerable number are 'new', but it's also evident that not all the gags that appeared on the Cheeky pages were included in the Catalogue (readers would have been a little aggrieved if Thursday's joke in the 26 January 1980 comic was also included in that issue's Catalogue so that particular funny was clearly precluded from use).

So the answer to my earlier question is a rather inconclusive "some of the jokes had appeared earlier, but some hadn't". My guess is that the answer would be the same for all of the catalogues, although the editor had far more pre-used gags to choose from in the case of the Knock-Knock Door, who featured in 110 issues so maybe there were fewer 'new' gags in the Catalogues focusing on the more frequently-appearing characters.

Also Lost To Posterity - unlike the cut-out posters, the Comedy Catalogues were printed on 2 sides of a sheet, so removing them from the comic would not result in any other feature being excised.

Catalogue Contents	Date
Knock-Knock Door Jokes	17/11/79
Manhole Man Jokes	24/11/79
Doctor Jokes	01/12/79
Six-Gun Sam Jokes	08/12/79
Mechanic Jokes	15/12/79
Constable Chuckle Jokes	22/12/79
Christmas Jokes	29/12/79
Jogging Jeremy Jokes	05/01/80
Farmer Giles Jokes	12/01/80
Petula Jokes	19/01/80
Mr Chips Jokes	26/01/80

Cheeky's Cut-Out Comedy Catalogue in the Cheeky Weekly Index

The Cut-Out Features – Giant Cheeky Poster

Cut-Out features often appeared simultaneously across several of IPC’s humour titles, with in-house ads publicising the commencement of, for example, January 1978’s Spotter Books promotion running in Krazy, Whoopee! and Whizzer and Chips as well as the toothy funster’s comic or, a year later, the concurrent appearance of calendar, diary and snap game in Whoopee!, Whizzer and Chips with Krazy, and Cheeky Weekly respectively (Krazy had been subsumed into Whizzer and Chips as of April 1978). Buster, the venerable humour title from IPC’s line, often exempted itself from these promotions as for some reason, unlike its counterparts, it didn’t feature internal colour pages (one promotion in which Buster did take part was 1978’s Mini-Comic marketing scheme, but due to the lack of colour inside the comic, the teeny version of Cheeky Weekly which appeared in that title was entirely monochrome).

Curiously, the Giant Cheeky poster commenced a week after the Seaside Snap Game began in Whizzer and Chips With Krazy Comic. Quite why the two promotions weren’t synchronised is a bit of a puzzle. In Cheeky Weekly dated 11 August 1979 Disaster Des and Calculator Kid occupied the centre pages and earlier in the comic there was a 2-page Joke-Box Jury which surely could have been jettisoned to accommodate the poster. Buster didn’t present any cut-outs in the same period but that’s no surprise. I don’t know whether a cut-out feature commenced in the 11 August 1979 Whoopee!, but if it did there were no adverts for it in Whizzer and Chips or Cheeky Weekly.

Cheeky Weekly 11 August 1979

Whizzer and Chips 11 August 1979

Whizzer and Chips began its summer '79
cut-out promotion a week earlier than
Cheeky Weekly
Sid's Snake art: Mike Lacey

The canny Cheeky Weekly editor presented the four instalments of the Giant Cheeky Poster in ascending order from the toothy funster’s feet upwards, forcing readers to buy all four comics in order to obtain a full-length pic of our grinning pal, although fans of Snail were pleased to see the mirthful mollusc appear in the first week. The borders around the poster were comprised of small pictures of 44 members of the Cheeky’s Week supporting cast, all of which appear to have been specially drawn for the poster by Frank McDiarmid. Whoever applied the colours allocated the wrong skin tone to Disco Kid, and some of the colouring surrounding the border characters in the actual poster differed from that shown on the cover of Cheeky Weekly dated 18 August 1979.

A vast improvement on the earlier, dismal Top Ten Poster, this colourful offering undoubtedly adorned the bedroom wall of many a Friend of Cheeky.

Art: Frank McDiarmid

Also lost to posterity – readers who chose to excise the Giant Cheeky Poster elements from their comics would be depriving future historians of...

Cover Date	Page 15	Page 18
18/08/79	What's New, Kids	Wednesday
25/08/79	Ad IPC:2000AD and Tornado, Ad IPC:Puzzle Time	Wednesday
01/09/79	6 Million Dollar Gran 3/3	Wednesday
08/09/79	What's New, Kids	Wednesday

Not to be confused with Pin-Up Pal posters.

The Cut-Out Features – Friends of Cheeky Snap Game

In Cheeky Weekly dated 06 January 1979 IPC announced the imminent commencement of yet another of their cut-out-and-keep promotions in, as was often the case, more than one of their comic titles...

I’m not quite sure why IPC adopted a synchronised approach to this kind of promotion. Surely if these marketing campaigns were applied to one comic at a time there would be more chance of that title picking up a few new readers, whereas I would have thought it unlikely that kids (or their parents) would shell out for 3 comics in addition to the one they already followed. Or maybe IPC’s research showed a significant proportion of their target market already subscribed to more than one title. Or possibly they felt that disgruntled readers, annoyed at losing some of their favourite features in order to accommodate the snip-and-save pages, would be less likely to jump ship to another title for the duration of the promotion since they would be aware that the companion comics were similarly afflicted. However, there was the threat that readers would move across the great divide to DC Thomson's titles which, as far as I'm aware, did not include cut-out schemes.

As was often the case, Buster exempted itself from this promotion due to its lack of internal colour pages at the time.

Friends of Cheeky is a phrase that harks back to issue 2 of the toothy funster’s comic, but rather than referring to readers of Cheeky Weekly as it originally did, the friends alluded to in the name of this game were Cheeky’s pals, 15 of whom appeared, along with the toothy funster himself, on the ‘cards’ which were presented in the centre pages over a four week period.

Art: Frank McDiarmid

10 of the images shown on the cards were taken from the Pin-Up Pal poster series which had been running since the comic’s first issue. Although Ursula, Jogging Jeremy and Louise had previously featured on Pin-Up Pal posters, their likenesses on the cards were sourced from elsewhere in the comic. The cards featuring Baker’s Boy, Dan-Dan the Lavender Man and Square-Eyes also re-used images that had originally appeared on the Cheeky’s Week pages, and were later used as Pin-Up Pal posters (see table below for details).

More Frank

 

Cover Date	Character Cards	Source	Source Issue Date	Notes
13/01/79	Cheeky	Pin-Up Pal	22/10/77
13/01/79	Ursula	Cover	04/03/78
13/01/79	Posh Claude	Pin-Up Pal	27/05/78
13/01/79	Constable Chuckle	Pin-Up Pal	22/04/78
20/01/79	Baker’s Boy	Tuesday	11/11/78	Later used as Pin-Up Pal 10/2/79
20/01/79	Square-Eyes	Friday	25/11/78	Later used as Pin-Up Pal 17/2/79
20/01/79	Six-Gun Sam	Pin-Up Pal	13/05/78
20/01/79	Vicar	Pin-Up Pal	11/03/78
27/01/79	Dan-Dan the Lavender Man	Thursday	25/11/78	Later used as Pin-Up Pal 3/3/79
27/01/79	Jogging Jeremy	Cover	24/12/77
27/01/79	Buster the Busker	Pin-Up Pal	25/03/78
27/01/79	Auntie Daisy	Pin-Up Pal	01/04/78
03/02/79	Lily Pop	Pin-Up Pal	18/02/78
03/02/79	Granny Gumdrop	Pin-Up Pal	20/05/78
03/02/79	Do-Good Dora	Pin-Up Pal	10/06/78
03/02/79	Louise	Thursday	25/11/78

Frank again

The 16 characters appeared on four cards each, with each group of four cards being printed together in a row on a single page, but with two characters to a page. The cards were printed in colour on the centre spread, which at that time was located within the pages of the Mystery Comic. Since readers of Cheeky Weekly were invited to believe that the Mystery Comic was, in Cheeky’s universe, a stand-alone comic, we can only ponder on how Cheeky rationalised finding himself featured on the centre pages of his reading matter of choice

Cheeky Weekly 13 January 1979 - Cheeky makes no mention of the cards within that week's issue of the Mystery Comic, nor did he in any of the subsequent three issues.
Frank yet again

...however the Mystery Comic cover
did mention the cards, as it did
in week two of the snap game.
Usual Mystery Comic cover star Tub was
ousted in favour of Disaster Des
for the first 2 weeks of the promotion.
Art: Mike Lacey

The instructions for playing the game (for the benefit of those who had presumably never enjoyed a round of the at times rumbustious Snap and/or weren't buying Cheeky Weekly a year earlier) were printed on page 24 well away from the centre pages, in the issue dated 03 February 1979, which contained the final set of cards.

Also lost to posterity – readers who chose to remove the Friends of Cheeky Snap elements from their comic would be depriving future generations of...

Cover Date	Page 15	Page 18
13/01/79	Mustapha Million 2/2	Elephant on the Run 1/2
20/01/79	Mustapha Million 2/2	Elephant on the Run 1/2
27/01/79	Mystery Boy episode 15 of 37	Elephant on the Run 1/2
03/02/79	Mystery Boy episode 16 of 37	Mustapha Million 1/2

...and Not to be confused with Silly Snaps, which appeared in the latter 3 editions listed above.

The Cut-Out Features - Top Ten Poster

The above announcement was printed in Cheeky Weekly dated 18 November 1978, but there was no further mention of the popularity poll until the 27 January 1979 edition, in which the toothy funster updated us on the current state of voting...

Front-runner John Travolta was at the time cresting a wave of UK popularity following his Saturday Night Fever (1977) and Grease (1978) film roles, as well as featuring with his Grease co-star, the third-placed Olivia Newton-John, on the hit single from the latter movie, You're the One That I Want, which topped the UK singles chart for 9 weeks in summer 1978. Second-placed Roger Moore (later Sir Roger) was of course the then-current James Bond, his most recent suave outing as 007 at that time being 1977's The Spy Who Loved Me. In fourth place was Henry Winkler, who portrayed Arthur Fonzarelli in American nostalgia-com TV show, Happy Days, an import that was very popular with UK viewers. The above announcement appeared again in the 10 and 17 February editions of Cheeky Weekly, and either the votes received in the intervening period maintained the relative positions of the 4 celebrities or else no further counts had been undertaken, as the placings remained the same as they had been when the announcement first appeared.

Cheeky Weekly dated 31 March 1979 included the above ad, trailing the commencement of a promotion the following week that would encompass companion titles Whoopee! and Whizzer and Chips as well as the toothy funster's own comic. In terms of the characters featured, this ad is somewhat Whoopee!-centric, depicting as it does Sweeny Toddler and Daisy and Billy Bumpkin, all of whom were appearing in that title at the time. Why no representatives from Whizzer and Chips and Cheeky Weekly?

The constituent parts of Cheeky Weekly's Top Ten Poster appeared in the issues dated 7, 14, 21 and 28 April 1979, with the centre pages of each issue devoted to the poster. The parts were published in ascending order of popularity except in the case of the 7th position (Blondie) who were omitted from week 1 but included in the following edition.

Week 1	10	The Boomtown Rats
Week 1	9	The Two Ronnies
Week 1	8	Kenny Dalglish
Week 2	7	Blondie
Week 1	6	Elvis Presley
Week 1	5	Lewis Collins
Week 2	4	Cheryl Ladd
Week 3	3	Henry Winkler
Week 3	2	Olivia Newton-John
Week 4	1	John Travolta

Accompanying each instalment of the poster, but safely located towards the rear of each issue so that they would survive the extraction of the poster elements, were instructions on assembly, given by the toothy funster himself (along with Snail). Each of these instructions were slightly different to the others, beyond the expected adjustments relating to the part numbers. The 21 April 1979 instructions refer to the 'colour poster' which, although the pages featured coloured borders and text boxes, is not really an accurate description of the contents.

Cheeky Weekly 21 April 1979 - To describe it as a colour poster is pushing things a bit. In addition to providing the instructions, this page announces the launch of another
multi-comic promotion the following week, this time including Buster and Monster Fun.

Here's what the poster looked like once the assembly instructions had been followed...

With the final part, the poster now styles itself The Cheeky Weekly Personality Poster despite the previous references to the Top Ten Poster. Sadly, due to the limitations of the somewhat basic printing process and the poor quality paper, all the celebrities, with the exception of John Travolta for some reason, seem to be peering out through a thick fog (I'm surprised Kenny Dalglish's match wasn't postponed, and The Two Ronnie's TV studio wasn't evacuated on the instructions of the fire marshal). I doubt whether this dull, depressing poster stayed on many bedroom walls for long.

But the big question is what happened to Roger Moore? From being placed at number 2 in the 27 January 1979 comic, he has completely disappeared from the rankings.

Also lost to posterity - comics that were cannibalised in order to assemble the poster would be depriving future comic historians of...

• 07 April 1979 - Tease Break puzzle filler and another appearance of the above 'Comics Go Pop' ad, & First page of Mustapha Million's 2-page adventure.
• 14 April 1979 - Ads for Tornado, and Buster and Monster Fun Spring Special, & Disaster Des.
• 21 April 1979 - Ads for Tornado, and Cor!! Holiday Special, & Why, Dad, Why?
• 28 April 1979 - Ads for Jackpot (first issue) and Buster and Monster Fun Spring Special, & full-page ad for the Milkshake promotion shown above.