The Whoopee Years - Paddywack

Lovable lunk Paddywack first bumbled his way into comic history in Cheeky Weekly issue number 38. At that time all the non-Cheeky strips in the comic were framed as being within the toothy funster’s universe, and the conceit around Paddywack saw him presented as the subject of a cartoon strip (within the Cheeky strip), drawn by Cheeky’s pal Doodle Doug. On Paddywack’s second Cheeky Weekly outing, the strip was accompanied by a caption asking readers to send in ‘Paddy Wack-type jokes’, and as of its 12 August 1978 appearance all the gags featured in the strips were based on those posted into the IPC office by youngsters hoping to win the £2 on offer to the first senders of jokes chosen for publication. Paddywack enjoyed 77 outings in Cheeky Weekly, and the perplexing poltroon was among the survivors who transferred into Whoopee when it absorbed the remnants of the toothy funster’s comic.

Paddywack's first
Whoopee! and Cheeky outing
Art: Jack Clayton as is all the art
in this post, unless noted otherwise

The prize money for successful Paddywack gag submissions was halved to just £1 as of the first combined Whoopee! and Cheeky, although a bonus prize of a whoopee cushion was added. Presumably the Paddywack jokes in the first few editions of the amalgamated title were originally submitted to Cheeky Weekly. Whether those readers whose gags appeared in the early days following the merge got the £2 promised in Cheeky’s comic or the reduced cash award plus bogus-flatus apparatus on offer in Whoopee!, and their feelings about whichever situation pertained, is something history does not record. The combined prize for a successful Paddywack gag was the same as that awarded to readers who had their letters printed on the Whoopee Chit-Chat letters page, although the sender of the week’s Star Letter would have their cash award boosted to a princely £2. The prize package was also the same as for the comic’s other reader-generated gag page, Smiler’s Smile-In, although the jokes on the ever-beaming little lad’s page of funnies were of the single-panel variety and he, like the Chit-Chat page, operated a two-tier reward system whereby the sender of the Smile of the Week would receive £2 + the unmentionable-noise-generating equipment.

In the first Whoopee! and Cheeky following their merge, Paddywack occupied a whole page, consisting of 3 gags, each of which spanned 3 panels. Subsequent issues saw the bumbling buffoon reduced to a single gag per week, each of which concluded in a single row of 3 panels. In the 19 April 1980 issue Paddywack’s strip was rather oddly placed above the second part of that week’s Stage School episode – usually it was at the foot of the page.

The lettering and image of Paddywack in the title was familiar to
readers of Cheeky Weekly

Mention of the whoopee cushion was dropped in the 10 May 1980 edition - readers were for the next few weeks informed that  successful entries would receive £1 plus an unspecified 'bonus award'. As of the 09 August 1980 comic, the bonus was revealed to be a Whoopee T-Shirt, although the cash element of the award remained at £1. From 30 August 1980 the design of the text and art surrounding the Paddywack strip underwent an overhaul.

Two Paddywack gags appeared in Whoopee! And Cheeky dated 04 October 1980, sharing the page with an announcement of the first instalment of Terry Bave’s How to Draw Comic Strips booklet in the following week’s issue. There was another double helping of our befuddled buddy in the 25 October 1980 edition, this time sharing the page with the announcement of presence of the traditional cut-out Guy Fawkes mask in the next issue. 

Paddywack's cover debut

A fortnight later Paddywack was promoted to the front page, where his joke was expanded to 4 panels plus a title panel containing an image of the titular twit which, as Paddy's cover run continued, would vary each week, often relating to the ensuing gag. The front cover jokes continued to be based on reader submissions, with the sender credited, but the solicitation for entries was relocated to the Whoopee Chit-Chat letters page. Paddywack’s front page appearances continued until the 27 December 1980 Christmas edition, the cover of which featured our muddled mate’s erstwhile Cheeky Weekly colleague Mustapha Million in a seasonal scene in which he transports Santa and his presents on a flying carpet. However a full page feature entitled Christmas with Paddywack was included inside the same issue.

Paddywack was back on the cover a week later, but reduced to a single row of 3 panels due to the announcement of the pull-out 1981 calender which occupied the centre pages.

The former 4-panels-plus-title Paddywack cover format then resumed for another 7 weeks. In that seventh week, cover dated 21 February 1981, an ominous announcement loomed at the top of the front page - ‘Great news for all readers – inside!’ However the headline did not indicate an imminent merger, but instead an impending free gift: the following issue (along with companion titles Buster, Jackpot and Tammy) would carry a free pack of Hubba Bubba bubble gum. A week later the presence of the chewy inducement sellotaped to the cover, plus the announcement of the pull-out Whoopee! Doubles card game commencing inside, saw Paddywack’s gag relocated to the comic’s interior, although the dithering dunderhead featured on one of the sample cards shown on the front page, alongside a selection of his Whoopee co-stars appearing on the first selection of cards on the centre pages (as the name of the game would suggest, successful execution of a round would require two of each card design, and Paddy's second card appearance was in the 07 March 1981 edition). The same ‘boom’ issue saw the cash element of the prize for successful Paddywack gag-furnishers increase to £2 – the Whoopee! T-shirt was maintained. This meant that the Paddywack prize now outstripped the measly £1 + T-shirt awarded to readers who got their letter printed in the comic and the same value prize doled out to successful donors of Smile-In gags (although the Star Letter/Smile of the Week still received £2 + T-shirt).

Paddywack then returned to the cover for a 17 week run, following which the same half-page format that had previously appeared on the front page continued inside the comic (albeit in black and white) for a further 18 issues.

The witless welly-wearer was featured in the 17 October 1981 instalment of Terry Bave’s second How to Draw Comics booklet (Terry’s first collection of cartooning tips a year earlier had clearly elicited a positive reader response). Ironically, Paddy's was among the features bumped from the comic that week due to the presence of the mighty Mr Bave's instructional treatise.

The final time that reader contributions for Paddywack gags were sought was in the issue cover-dated 12 December 1981, and subsequent Paddywack strips showed no reader credits.

The comic dated 02 January 1982 saw the commencement of the Cheeky Diary for that year. As seasoned consumers of IPC product would have come to expect, the 12-month journal was presented in 4 weekly cut-out sections, each of which was designed to be detached from the comic, rotated through 90 degrees and folded in half before being collated. The first instalment featured the diary front cover, boasting a rendition of the toothy funster with which long-time fans of the grinning gagster were particularly familiar, together with the back cover which carried a comedic confection described as Paddywack’s Calendar for 1982. Our discombobulating dimwit chum's strip was missing that week, although as well as appearing on the diary's back cover he also featured within the diary on a page entitled Cheeky Predicts, and on the second of the December pages.

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A week later Paddywack’s strip was expanded to fill a whole page, and saw the inimitable idiot employed as a lift operator. Instead of just a single gag, Paddy delivered three elevator-related funnies during the course of the episode, and his mum contributed the concluding quip. There followed a further 15 full-page Paddywacks (during this run a ‘Paddywack Corner', consisting of 3 reader’s jokes in text form and with credits, appeared on the Whoopee Chit-Chat page in the 06 March 1982 comic, the only time such a feature was included), broken in the 01 May 1982 issue when the feature shared a page with an ad announcing the presence of a Mekon poster in that week’s issue of Eagle.

Paddywack’s ensuing 57 appearances, featuring the perpetual plonker in a variety of jobs, saw the number of his full-page outings diminish in favour of half-pagers (the final of his 10 full-page episodes of this run featured in the edition dated 14 August 1982). Different renderings of the same pet shop based gag were printed in the 26 February and 04 June 1983 editions.

The 02 July 1983 edition of the comic was the scene of considerable upheaval due to the absorption of another failed title, this time Wow! All of the Cheeky Weekly contingent survived this latest merge, although suffering differing fortunes. Paddywack, along with his former stablemate Cheeky, found himself consigned to the Quick Strips page, an assemblage of 4 single-row strips. Our feeble-minded friend had of course spent a considerable amount of his career in this brief format, so his transfer to this arrangement was not as ignominious as that of his toothy ex-colleague who had never before appeared in such reduced circumstances. To make things worse for our grinning pal, Paddywack appeared at the top of the page while Cheeky was placed third.

Whoopee and Wow! 02 July 1983
Bleep art: Jim Barker
Cheeky art: Frank McDiarmid
Here is the News art: Ed McHenry

Paddywack and Cheeky were to be confined to the Quick Strips format until Whoopee itself succumbed to a merge and was subsumed into Whizzer and Chips in April 1985. Neither Paddywack nor Cheeky survived this merge, although Cheeky had been appearing in the famous 'two comics in one' since Krazy was merged into it back in 1978, and continued to do so until 1986, albeit as a member of the Krazy Gang rather than a solo star.

Paddywack made some appearances outside his own strip during his Whoopee career. A feature entitled The Whoopee! Quiz (later to be known as Whoopee! It’s Quiz Time) began in the edition dated 14 March 1981. Readers' memory power was put to the test each week as scenes from various strips in the current issue (the quiz was always located to the rear of the comic, usually page 31 - the furthest it got from the back cover was page 29) were shown, together with questions relating to the stories – answers were given at the bottom of the page. Paddywack was among the quiz subjects in the 25 April 1981, 26 June, 11 September and 16 October 1982 comics. He also featured in 26 December 1981’s Christmas Quiz Time and in Jack Oliver’s TV Quiz Kids puzzles in the 29 October 1983, 21 January and 04 February 1984 editions (in the latter it was actually only Paddywack’s hair that appeared – readers were tasked with identifying a selection of Whoopee characters by barnet only).

The chucklesome chump also made appearances in the Cheeky strips dated 22 November 1980 and 17 January 1981. There then followed a period when he fetched up in 10 of the toothy funster’s outings over 17 issues spanning 06 November 1982 to 26 February 1983.

A rare convocation of the titanic-toothed trio; Cheeky, Jeremy and Paddy
Art: Frank McDiarmid

Calculator Kid spin-off Calculator Corner was host to Paddywack in the 30 July 1983 comic.

The Paddywack gag strip was missing from just 37 of the 264 issues of Whoopee published from the date it absorbed Cheeky Weekly to its own demise. Jack Clayton's distinctive art style (which to me is somehow reminiscent of seaside postcards), with lots of background gags, livened up the frequently corny gags.

My apologies - Blogger have introduced changes which seem to have resulted in images appearing smaller than previously. If there's a way around this, I haven't found it.

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.

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 - Paddywack

Forgive me for doing two consecutive Features posts, but I have been struck by the realisation that, like 6 Million Dollar Gran, Paddywack appears to straddle the reality boundary of Cheeky's universe.  Initially Paddywack appears as, from Cheeky's perspective, a fictional character drawn by Doodle Doug.  However in the 02 September 1978 issue, Paddywack is seen in the Krazy Town cinema talking to Cheeky.

Before trying to make sense of Paddywack's ambiguous relationship with Cheeky's world, let's look at the history of the feature.

Junior artist and Cheeky's pal Doodle Doug returned to the pages of Cheeky Weekly in the issue dated 08 July 1978, having been absent since the 14 January 1978 comic.  In his initial run of appearances, Doug's function was to draw a single-row gag strip each week.  These strips didn't feature any recurring characters or situations.  However, on his return on 08 July 1978, Doug tells Cheeky "I've got a whole page for you to look at!  I've called it Paddywack!", and the ensuing page does indeed focus on Paddywack, and includes 2 gags.  From that issue, all the strips 'drawn by Doug' focused on Paddywack.

The following week's Paddywack page featured 3 gags, and included a caption inviting readers to send in any "Paddy Wack-type jokes".  In another of the inconsistencies that featured in the comic, the panel refers to Paddy Wack, while Doodle Doug and the feature's title referred to the character as Paddywack.

The first Paddywack page to feature jokes submitted by readers was in the 12 August 1978 issue.  Two gags featured on the page, one sent in by Paul Scarfe of Leeds, and the other by an unknown reader.  A caption asked the mystery joke donor to "send us your name and address, pal - we'll recognise your handwriting!"

The 16 September 1978 Paddywack page established what was to become the tradition of 3 gags on a page, which was to remain the norm for the rest of the feature's run (excepting those occasions where the feature was reduced to less than a whole page).  On 30 September 1978 the original title panel, which had appeared across the top of the first frame, was replaced by a title that ran across the top of the page and featured a reversed letter K, together with Paddywack's face at the right hand side.  This same issue introduced the black background for the strip which was to remain for all subsequent full-page Paddywack features.

We have to acknowledge that there was an undertone of national stereotyping in the case of Paddywack (the character identified himself as Irish on a single occasion - in the 15 September 1979 issue), although the comic publishers wisely asked the readers to send in "Paddywack-type jokes" rather than identifying a particular nationality.  This was not the only case of questionable humour appearing in Cheeky Weekly - the Joke-Box Jury feature regularly included jokes that would be regarded as inappropriate today, and a number of Cheeky's Pals exhibited traits that would not be acceptable in current mainstream comics.  Cheeky Weekly was being published in very different times from our own, and 'humour' of this nature was common in the media and pubs, workplaces and school playgrounds.

Cheeky Weekly 20 October 1979

All the Paddywack strips were drawn by Jack Clayton, who had previously drawn the Home Movie feature in the comic.  Jack doesn't appear to have been as prolific across comics as some of his contemporaries such as Terry Bave, Tom Paterson and Mike Lacey, who each had strips in most if not all of the IPC humour titles of the period.  Indeed, the Home Movie strip's final appearance was in the issue dated 10 June 1978, a month before Paddywack started, so Jack never had more than one strip running in Cheeky Weekly at any time.  He had a very distinctive style which particularly suited the Paddywack gags, although in the early strips Jack was trying to make his artwork look a little primitive as it was supposed to be drawn by Doodle Doug.  As the strip progressed, Jack's usual style returned.

In 6 issues the Paddywack feature appeared across two pages, but the remainder of the strips were a single page, or less if space was at a premium.

With the introduction of Cheeky Weekly's 'new look' in the 07 July 1979 issue, Paddywack's strip moved to the rear of the comic and no further reference was made to Doodle Doug being the artist (although Doug continued to appear as one of the cast of Cheeky's Week).

Paddywack most regularly followed the Tuesday page (37 times), followed by 12 appearances following Friday, and 9 after Calculator Kid.  In terms of page numbers, the strip was highly mobile, appearing between pages 4 and 29.

The Paddywack feature appeared in 77 issues of Cheeky Weekly, missing only two issues in its run between 08 July 1978 and 26 January 1980 (the penultimate issue).  For some reason Paddywack, who survived the merge with Whoopee!, did not appear on the final two feature pages in the last issue of Cheeky Weekly, in which all the other characters who made the move into the new companion comic were shown meeting their Whoopee! pals.  It could be argued that this was due to Paddywack's status as a fictional character in relation to Cheeky's Week, but Gran, another fictional character from Cheeky's viewpoint, was included.

OK, so now let's address Paddywack's seemingly dual existence in Cheeky's world.  I can only assume that Paddywack was a real inhabitant of Krazy Town, on whom Doodle Doug based his strips.  Cheeky must have known that the subject of Doug's strips was in fact real, since the toothy funster was not surprised when he met Paddywack in the cinema. Cheeky certainly does react to Paddywack, but in my view his reaction is one of exasperation at Paddywack's comment (which was a common reaction of characters in the Paddywack strips), rather than surprise at coming face-to-face with what he had hitherto considered to be a fictional character. Paddywack made a further trans-dimensional hop to appear as one of the guests at Pete and Pauline Potts' party in the 6 Million Dollar Gran strip in Cheeky Weekly dated 06 October 1979.

It could be argued that Paddywack became a real inhabitant of Krazy Town when his link to Doodle Doug was severed as from the 07 July 1979 issue, but the meeting between Cheeky and Paddywack had occurred in the 02 September 1978 issue.

Paddywack - The Whoopee Years

                                                                                                                                                         

Feature	First Appearance	Final Appearance	Total Issues	Total Issues Missed In Run	Page History
Paddywack	08-Jul-78	26-Jan-80	77	2	4,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,20,22,23,24,25,26,27,28,29

Issues Missed In Run

01-Sep-79

08-Dec-79

                                                                                                                                     

Feature	Artist	Number of Issues	First Appearance	Final Appearance
Paddywack	Jack Clayton	77	08-Jul-1978	26-Jan-1980