The pages - page 6

Up to now when we've taken a look at the contents of a particular page throughout Cheeky Weekly's run, we've discovered that the position of features in the first 2 comics were somewhat different to the later issues.  This was due to the presence on page 2 of a welcome from Cheeky, which was absent from all the subsequent editions.  However, in the case of page 6 we find that James Bold's first adventure, Fangs of Fear, occupied this position from the first issue up to and including that dated 24 December 1977.  Nevertheless, the welcome-page-displacement-effect meant that in the first 2 Cheeky Weeklys, page 6 hosted the first part of Bold's 2-page instalment, and thereafter, in the issues up to 24 December 1977, page 2 of Bold's adventure was on page 6.

There was some disruption to what had become the established page order in the Christmas 1977 issue dated 31 December 1977, resulting from extended coverage of Cheeky's festive antics.  Thus 6 Million Dollar Gran occupied page 6, while the final episode of Fangs of Fear was moved further back in the comic.

Gran's adventures then became the regular subject on page 6, all the way up to the comic dated 30 September 1978, when Cheeky appeared in a half page feature on page 6, to ask "Hoi! What did you get up to today?"

The toothy funster's enquiry resulted from the revamp which Cheeky Weekly underwent in this issue.  The main change was the appearance of The Mystery Comic in the centre pages, but the Cheeky's Week features were redesigned to include a brief diary section at the foot of each page, captioned 'What did YOU do today?', with space for readers to record any significant events in their day.  In the half-page feature mentioned above, Cheeky explains the purpose of this new area of the page.  The remainder of page 6 carries an ad for the 1979 Knockout Annual.

The following week, two ads occupied page 6; one for Soccer Monthly, and the second for the first combined issue of 2000AD and Starlord.

An ad appeared on page 6 again in the following week's issue dated 14 October 1978, this time for Bryant & May's Woodcraft Village construction kits.  Bryant & May were of course manufacturers of matches.  From the drawings of the completed models featured in the ad, it seems that the company had ideas of expanding their business by producing a series of construction kits which used matchsticks as the basic building material. The pictures show completed models of a church, windmill and village shops - hardly the stuff to set the pulses racing of the Star Wars generation.  I presume one of the production lines at their factory was dedicated to this project and had the 'add flammable head' switch firmly in the 'off' position.  I'd hate to think what would happen if the lines got mixed up - smokers desperate for a drag would open their boxes of matches and try to strike headless sticks, and kids would find their carefully-constructed rustic idyll becoming a disaster area as it erupted into flames. The connection between toys and matches is an uneasy one today, as I'm sure it was in the late 70s.

Page 6 in the 21 October 1978 issue was the home of the Monday feature that week, but in the following issue 2 IPC ads were featured in that location; one for that year's Cor!! Comic Annual, and one for IPC's educational mag, Look and Learn.

The next week, a half-page Joke-Box Jury shared page 6 with a Shredded Wheat ad featuring Johnny Morris, of TV's Animal Magic fame, announcing that special packs of the cereal carried tokens which could be sent in to raise money for the People's Dispensary for Sick Animals.  If that wasn't incentive enough, consumers of the wheaty breakfast comestible could win one of 200 cassette radios by posting off their coupons.

Page 6 had become dominated by ads at this point, as in the 11 November 1978 comic it featured an ad for the first Cheeky Annual, plus an ad, presumably aimed at those for whom the idea of matchstick modelling was entirely too risky, inviting them to enter the less flammable world of Lego.

Page 6 in the next issue featured an ad for retailer John Menzies, making their bid to attract custom in the run up to Christmas by spotlighting 5 board games, which could be purchased at reduced prices in their stores.  Unlike a certain supplier of ignition material to the smokers of this fair land, Menzies had fully bought in to the late 70's zeitgeist, heading their ad 'Star Toys At John Menzies', cleverly using the familiar Star Wars typeface against a black background.

On page 6 the following week Lego was back, coupled this time with an ad for the Krazy Annual.

The furious bout of hard selling on page 6 came to an end in the 02 December 1978 issue when the Laugh and Learn feature came to rest in this location.

The following week, the Tuesday page appeared on page 6, while the next week it was the turn of page 6 to host the Monday page again.

The 13 January 1979 issue saw 6 Million Dollar Gran back on page 6, before Monday returned for another 3 weeks.  This brings us to the comic dated 10 February 1979, when the reader participation feature Joke-Box Jury was to be found on the 6th page.

Monday was then featured on page 6 for the next 20 issues, but 6 Million Dollar Gran was back on 07 July 1979, and for the following 2 weeks as well.

Gran was evicted from page 6 for the next 3 weeks, by What's New Kids, Joke-Box Jury and What's New Kids, respectively.  The synthetic senior citizen made a comeback for a further 2 weeks before being deposed by the aspiring performers of Stage School on 01 September 1979.

Resilient Gran was then firmly back in charge of page 6 for another 7 weeks, until the Monday feature returned.

Ads were back on the page 6 agenda in the 03 November 1979 issue when another Cor!! Comic Annual ad (this time for the 1980 offering) joined with an ad for Pop-A-Points (a range of coloured pens, as far as I can tell) to fill the page.

6 Million Dollar Gran then made one last appearance on page 6, after which our tiny showbiz chums of Stage School took over the page from 17 November 1979 until 22 December 1979.

In a surprise move, middle-eastern moneybags Mustapha Million took control of page 6 in the 29 December 1979 comic, but he was ousted in the next two issues by Monday and Joke-Box Jury respectively, before returning to page 6 for a final time on 19 January 1980.

The following week Monday returned to page 6 for the last time, and in the final issue dated 02 February 1980, Disaster Des was featured on page 6 in the first page of a 2-page set, although each page had a separate story .  Presumably the editor found an unused DD page, and as Des was not going to survive the merge with Whoopee!, there was nowhere else to use it.
Count of Elements (or distinct combinations thereof) appearing on Page 6

Elements	Total
6 Million Dollar Gran 2/3	30
Monday	26
6 Million Dollar Gran 3/3	11
James Bold 2/2	8
6 Million Dollar Gran 2/2	7
Stage School 1/2	6
6 Million Dollar Gran 1/2	2
6 Million Dollar Gran 1/3	2
Advertisement: IPC\Advertisement: IPC	2
Advertisement: Lego\Advertisement: IPC	2
James Bold 1/2	2
Joke-Box Jury	2
Mustapha Million 1/2	2
What's New, Kids	2
6 Million Dollar Gran	1
Advertisement: IPC\Hoi! What do you get up to all week	1
Advertisement: John Menzies	1
Advertisement: Pop-A-Points\Advertisement: IPC	1
Advertisement: Shredded Wheat\Joke-Box Jury	1
Advertisement: Woodcraft Village	1
Disaster Des 1/2	1
Easter Monday	1
Joke-Box Jury 1/2	1
Laugh and Learn 1/2 1/2	1
Monday 1/2	1
Stage School	1
Tuesday	1

Cheeky Weekly cover date 25 March 1978

Having enjoyed a few weeks where the main cover illustration was specially-drawn, on this week's front page we get the cut-and-pasted 'standard Cheeky face' which by now is familiar to Cheeky Weekly readers, having been used in the comic several times before, for example in the 'welcome' pages in the first 2 issues.  It's also familiar to readers of this blog as it's used at the top of the page.

Sharing the main section of the cover with Cheeky is Auntie Daisy, the school meals lady, but she doesn't appear inside this week.

Cheeky's Mum makes her cover debut in the What a Cheek strip (she has, of course, appeared inside the comic a number of times by now).  The strip also features a generic doctor character although Doctor Braincell, Krazy Town's merry medic, had made his first appearance in the 11 March 1978 comic, and appears on Friday in this issue.

The Sunday page sees Lily Pop tell Cheeky it's her week off, and on Sunday evening Cheeky meets Iddle-I-Po, stalwart of Cheeky's strip in Krazy comic.  This is the Chinese character's only appearance in Cheeky Weekly, and it seems he has turned up in an attempt to bolster the circulation figures for Krazy, as he's wearing a badge saying 'Save a comic, buy Krazy'.  Cheeky's chirpy Chinese chum looks somewhat different to the version that appears in Krazy.

This week's 6 Million Dollar Gran story is the first to be drawn by Nigel Edwards, and tells of Gran's arrest after being duped into helping a robber.  All ends well as Gran apprehends the real criminal.

Mustapha Million's bodyguards cause problems when they won't let him play rough games, but Mustapha solves the problem by hiring more bodyguards to guard him from his bodyguards.



In this week's instalment of the film serial, Space Family Robinson discover what lay beneath King Blubber's apparently rubbery hide.

The holiday special season gets under way (in March? isn't that a bit early? I presume IPC have a whole stack of holiday or summer specials planned this year, so have to get an early start) with an ad on page 31 for the Monster Fun Holiday Special.

This is a great issue for all fans of luscious Lily Pop as, despite it being her week off, she appears every day.  It's just a pity that Frank McDiarmid, obviously busy with other work, didn't get to draw her in his own, inimitable style.  Nobody draws Lily with such oomph as Frank.

In fact, there is only one pure Frank McDiarmid element in this issue, and that's the 3-panel conclusion to Wednesday.  Unknown Cheeky Artist 1 weighs in with 6 elements, Barrie Appleby provides 4, and Frank McDiarmid pencils furnish 2 elements.

Cheeky Weekly	Cover Date: 25-Mar-1978, Issue 23 of 117
Page	Details
1	Cover Feature 'Auntie Daisy' - Art Frank McDiarmid\What a Cheek - Art Frank McDiarmid pencils
2	Sunday - Art Unknown Cheeky Artist 1 (final art on feature)
3	Skateboard Squad - Art Jimmy Hansen
4	Sunday evening - Art Unknown Cheeky Artist 1 (final art on feature)
5	6 Million Dollar Gran - Art Nigel Edwards (first art on feature)
6	6 Million Dollar Gran - Art Nigel Edwards (first art on feature)
7	6 Million Dollar Gran - Art Nigel Edwards (first art on feature)
8	Monday - Art Unknown Cheeky Artist 1 (final art on feature)
9	James Bold 'Tower of Terror' 2 of 6 - Art Mike White
10	James Bold 'Tower of Terror' 2 of 6 - Art Mike White
11	Suddenly - Art Unknown Cheeky Artist 1 (final art on feature)
12	Tuesday - Art Unknown Cheeky Artist 1 (final art on feature)
13	Old Comic reprint from Tiger 'Dodger Caine' 2 of 3
14	What's New, Kids
15	Wednesday - Art Barrie Appleby
16	Creepy Sleepy Tale - Art Keith Reynolds
17	Creepy Sleepy Tale - Art Keith Reynolds\Wednesday (conclusion) - Art Frank McDiarmid
18	Joke-Box Jury
19	Thursday - Art Barrie Appleby
20	Home Movie 'The Thing from Another Planet' - Art Jack Clayton
21	Friday - Art Barrie Appleby
22	Mustapha Million - Art Reg Parlett
23	Mustapha Million - Art Reg Parlett
24	Ad: IPC 'Look and Learn' 3 of 16 Ad: 'Mickey Mouse' 2 of 18
25	Saturday - Art Barrie Appleby
26	Tweety and Sylvester 'Showdown at Granny's'
27	Tweety and Sylvester 'Showdown at Granny's'
28	Interval - Art Frank McDiarmid pencils
29	Space Family Robinson 'The Tunnel' - Art John Richardson (final art on feature)
30	Space Family Robinson 'The Tunnel' - Art John Richardson (final art on feature)
31	Ad: IPC 'Monster Fun Holiday Special' 1 of 2 \Saturday - Art Unknown Cheeky Artist 1
32	Pin-up pal 'Buster the Busker' - Art Frank McDiarmid

Cheeky's Week Artists Cover Date 25-Mar-1978

Artist	Elements
Unknown Cheeky Artist 1	6
Barrie Appleby	4
Frank McDiarmid pencils	2
Frank McDiarmid	1

Profile - Postie

Postie had the honour of being the first of Cheeky's pals to feature in the What a Cheek cover strip, on the front of the debut issue of Cheeky weekly.  The perky post person was a regular in Krazy's 'Ello It's Cheeky pages, so he was possibly allocated the front cover slot in Cheeky's first issue to reassure prospective purchasers who had previously read Krazy that the 'Ello It's Cheeky-style humour they had enjoyed would continue into the new comic.  Postie returned to the cover of Cheeky Weekly one further time, in a single-panel joke crammed into the corner of page 1 of the 18 August 1979 issue.

In total, the merry mailman appeared in 27 issues of Cheeky Weekly, not quite making it to the end of the comic's run, his final appearance being in the 19 January 1980 issue which was just 2 weeks short of the last issue before the merge into Whoopee!

Postie's function on the majority of occasions he appeared in Krazy had been to ask Cheeky to write a limerick about a different subject (often a town or county or, in later issues, a reader's name) each time.  In Cheeky Weekly his role altered somewhat and he became a source of mail-related jokes and puns.

In the Christmas 1977 issue we got a rare glimpse of an off-duty Postie, yet as a guest at Cheeky's new year party in the 06 January 1979 issue, the daft delivery man was in full uniform.  However, he was in civvies again for the new year party in the 05 January 1980 comic.

off duty

Postie featured every day during Cheeky's Week (well, every day except Sunday, which was presumably his day off) in the 18 March 1978 issue.

In the 15 September 1979 issue we learned that Postie is Do-Good Dora's uncle.

Postie wasn't averse to delivering the same joke twice.

Is that really Frank's address on the shoe?

Despite the honour of being the first character to swap a gag with our toothy hero in Cheeky Weekly, postie didn't appear on a Pin-Up Pal poster, nor did the larking letter-deliverer get to feature in a Burpo Special (although he was the subject of the Krazy equivalent, Cheeky's Pal, in the 20 August 1977 issue of that comic).

The longest Krazy Town went without a postal delivery was the 17 weeks that elapsed between Postie's appearance in the 15 July 1978 issue and his return in the comic dated 11 November 1978.

Character	Total Issues	First Appearance	Final Appearance
Postie	27	22-Oct-1977	19-Jan-1980

Count of elements by artist

Character	Artist	Total Elements
Postie	Frank McDiarmid	23
Postie	Frank McDiarmid pencils	6
Postie	Mike Lacey	5
Postie	Jim Watson	1

The features -James Bold 'Tower of Terror'

Cheeky began reading the third James Bold tale, Tower of Terror, in Cheeky Weekly issue 22, dated 18 March 1978. The previous Bold adventure, The Ghost Highwayman, had ended in the 04 March 1978 issue, but the following week the Bold strip was bumped from the comic by a page of competition results and a competition to win Basil Brush records. This was the only break in the series of Bold escapades which ran from Cheeky Weekly's debut issue until 05 August 1978 (although Bold did continue to appear thereafter in the Cheeky annuals).

Having had a week to recover from his encounter with The Ghost Highwayman, a refreshed Bold and assistant Angel O'Mercy embark on his next perilous investigation, into the terrifying events at Headland House…

 

Angel sees the creature climb into the tower through an open window, but by the time Bold looks up the thing is gone.  Doubting what she had seen, Angel follows Bold into Headland House, where they find a table laid for two and a mysterious note of welcome.  Just as our hero starts to partake of the food, Angel notices that the eyes in all the portraits adorning the wall have turned to focus on her, and something is scratching at the window.

The couple are then distracted by the arrival of a car, and move outside to find the occupants are film director Marcus Crane and his actress wife, Edwina.  Suddenly, a black shape leaps from the tower above and crashes into Angel, who is relieved to discover her assailant is nothing more sinister than Edwina's cat, Sheba.

Explaining that he laid out the food to welcome his wife to their new holiday home before leaving to collect her from the local station, Crane invites Bold and Angel to join them for supper.  During the meal, Angel is struck by the sinister air of their hosts.  Crane, doing nothing to assuage her fears, insists that she and Bold stay the night at Headland House, averring "There is no danger in this house.  No danger at all!"

Meanwhile, something tentacled sits watching Headland House with its single eye.

After supper, our supernatural investigators are shown to their rooms, Angel in the east wing, and Bold in the west.  Crane gives Bold a copy of his latest film script, entitled Bats of Bellonia.  The ghost-hunter, unable to sleep, flips through the script and finds that a scene involving mysterious organ music melds into real life, as he hears the sound of an organ coming from outside his room.  Following the echoing chords, Bold enters the music room to see a cowled figure seated at the keyboard.  As the figure turns, Bold is shocked to see there is no face inside the hood.

Our hero rips a sword from the wall and lunges at the mysterious musician, determined to learn whether it really is a ghost.  The figure jabs a special button on the keyboard, and gas seeps from the organ pipes, overcoming Bold, who regains consciousness some hours later, now alone.

Finding the door locked, Bold exits through the window and climbs out onto the ledge.  As he edges along the narrow parapet, with waves crashing on the rocks far below, Bold is shocked to see Angel a few feet away on the same ledge.  As he approaches her, Angel explains that she had climbed out of her window when gas started entering her room through a ventilator grille.

Bold attempts to climb inside another room, but finds it full of bats.  The leathern-winged denizens of the night stream to freedom through the open window, toppling the two ghost-hunters from their precarious position and into the sea.

As Angel plunges into the roiling waves she sees the tentacled creature that she first spied climbing Headland Tower, rising to the surface.  She hauls herself onto a rock, but is plucked from her perch and held aloft by the cyclopean horror.  Bold mounts the rock and, snatching up a piece of driftwood, lays into the monster, which shatters and catches fire.  Our heroes have no time to reflect on this surprising event, as a horde of the tentacled terrors emerge from the waves, forcing Bold and Angel to strike out for the beach below Headland House.  Our heroes make for a door only to find that it's locked, but much to their relief they realise the eight-legged fiends are heading away and up the side of the tower.

The steel-nerved ghost-hunter kicks down the door and he and Angel enter to find Crane and Edwina rehearsing a scene from Bats of Bellonia.  Crane explains that in this part of the film, two intruders enter a room and find a trap has been laid for them.  The script mirrors Bold's predicament as Crane's savage dogs attack our heroes, who are forced into a lift that descends to the basement.

Bold and Angel emerge into a room strewn with wooden chests.  Angel opens one, and finds a coiled snake inside, about to strike.  Crane's image appears on a TV monitor and explains that the snake is the guardian of his private vault, and Angel will not live long enough to discover his secrets.

Now read on…

Well once again we find that supposedly supernatural events are entirely man-made.  Will Bold ever encounter a real ghost, rather than some nutcase with an unnecessarily elaborate nefarious scheme?

I expect that this Bold story, like Bold's first adventure (and, I'm guessing, the second), was based on a Maxwell Hawke strip that originally appeared in Buster.  Looking through the list on the Buster comic website, I would guess that Tower of Terror was a rehash of Maxwell Hawke and The Haunted Headland, which ran in Buster from 04 May to 29 June 1963, a total of 9 weeks assuming there were no breaks.  Tower of Terror ran for 6 weeks, with the concluding instalment in Cheeky Weekly dated 22 April 1978.

Like the previous Bold thriller, the framing device for Tower of Terror saw Cheeky sneak a weekly free read of the James Bold novel in the newsagents.

I assume that the art on the run of Tower of Terror was again by Mike White, who drew The Ghost Highwayman, but I'm no expert on adventure artists so if anyone knows different, please get in touch.

You can view my work-in-progress summary of all the Bold adventures here.

Cheeky Annual 1985

Bruce concludes his excellent series of posts on the Cheeky Annuals with a look at the 1985 annual, which was the last to appear.  See here and here.

While you're over at Bruce's place, if you haven't already done so, take a minute to vote in the great Burpo vs Sweeny poll.  At the moment, Sweeny is inexplicably ahead in the vote, so we need to make sure Burpo, the rightful holder of the title 'IPC's number one toddler terror' wins by a clear margin.  To vote, click the Polls Archive link in the right hand column of Bruce's blog.

Cheeky Weekly cover date 18 March 1978

The Pin-Up Pal poster of Baby Burpo gets above-the-title billing this week, and below that is a reference to the Old Comic feature, as Cheeky eagerly peers into his dad's chest of comics.  This depiction of Cheeky and Snail would appear to have been specially drawn for the cover by Frank McDiarmid, unlike many of the earlier 'inside-this-week' cover pictures which featured artwork taken from panels from the comic's interior.  Below this illustration is the What A Cheek strip, featuring hilarity at a height at the expense of an anonymous steeplejack.

6 Million Dollar Gran recovers a stolen racehorse and carries it past the winning post in a 2-page tale, and just as we begin to wonder if one of Cheeky's Pals will be featured throughout the week in this issue, on Monday Cheeky meets mirthful mailman Postie who is puzzling over a letter with an indecipherable address. The perplexed postal worker is determined to solve the mystery by the end of the week.

Later on Monday, Cheeky settles down to read the first chapter of the new James Bold novel, Tower of Terror.  Unlike last week, Cheeky manages to complete his reading of the chapter before the irate newsagent pounces.

On Tuesday Cheeky ascends to the attic and raids the chest we saw on the cover to read a page from Chips, 1945, containing vintage Casey Court and Alfie the Air Tramp strips.

Malodorous miscreant Pongo Snodgrass, from Krazy comic, makes a brief appearance in this issue's Creepy Sleepy Tale, and in a memorable instalment of their adventures, the Robinson family learn that King Blubber is not what he appears.  However, they won't discover what he actually IS until next week's episode of Space Family Robinson.

There are 6 pure Frank McDiarmid Cheeky's Week elements this issue, with Frank McDiarmid pencils taking over on Wednesday and providing a total of 7 elements.  However, in addition to his work on Cheeky's Week, there is also pure Frank McDiarmid art on the main cover illustration and the Pin-Up Pal poster.

Cheeky Weekly	Cover Date: 18-Mar-1978, Issue 22 of 117
Page	Details
1	Cover Feature 'Old Comic' - Art Frank McDiarmid\What a Cheek - Art Frank McDiarmid
2	Sunday - Art Frank McDiarmid
3	Skateboard Squad - Art Jimmy Hansen
4	Sunday evening - Art Frank McDiarmid
5	6 Million Dollar Gran - Art Ian Knox
6	6 Million Dollar Gran - Art Ian Knox
7	What's New, Kids
8	Monday - Art Frank McDiarmid
9	James Bold 'Tower of Terror' 1 of 6 - Art Mike White
10	James Bold 'Tower of Terror' 1 of 6 - Art Mike White
11	Suddenly - Art Frank McDiarmid
12	Tuesday - Art Frank McDiarmid
13	Old Comic reprint from Chips 'Casey Court' 1 of 3 reprint from Chips 'Alfie the Air Tramp'
14	Ad: Weetabix (first appearance)
15	Wednesday - Art Frank McDiarmid pencils
16	Creepy Sleepy Tale - Art Keith Reynolds
17	Creepy Sleepy Tale - Art Keith Reynolds\Wednesday (conclusion) - Art Frank McDiarmid pencils
18	Joke-Box Jury
19	Thursday - Art Frank McDiarmid pencils
20	Home Movie '2001 A Space Oddity' - Art Jack Clayton
21	Friday - Art Frank McDiarmid pencils
22	Mustapha Million - Art Reg Parlett
23	Mustapha Million - Art Reg Parlett
24	Ad: IPC 'Look and Learn' 2 of 16 Ad: 'Buster' 5 of 5
25	Saturday - Art Frank McDiarmid pencils
26	Road Runner 'The Lucky Charms'
27	Road Runner 'The Lucky Charms'
28	Interval - Art Frank McDiarmid pencils
29	Space Family Robinson 'King Blubber's Secret' - Art John Richardson
30	Space Family Robinson 'King Blubber's Secret' - Art John Richardson
31	Saturday - Art Frank McDiarmid pencils\Ad: IPC 'Mickey Mouse' 1 of 18
32	Pin-up pal 'Baby Burpo' - Art Frank McDiarmid

Profile - Gunga Jim

Supposedly amusing national stereotypes were common in the media during the 60s and 70s.  It seems shocking to us now that 'humour' of this type even extended to children's comics, but we must acknowledge that a number of Cheeky's pals were presented in ways that would be considered inappropriate today.  One such was Gunga Jim, who appeared in 62 issues of Cheeky Weekly.

This blog's mission is to take a detailed look at Cheeky Weekly, so it's necessary to examine all aspects of the comic, even those which are less palatable to current tastes.  I therefore present this post as a document of less enlightened times.

Jim's first appearance

Jim, whose name was of course an allusion to the unfortunate water-bearer subject of Kipling's poem Gunga Din, first appeared in the issue dated 21 January 1978.  He was featured sporadically thereafter, his puns on the word curry or Indian city names often delivered in a 'comic' speech-pattern.  Jim's catchphrase, uttered when he made what he considered to be a particularly successful joke, was "Oh curry-curry, hot stuff!"


Unlike some characters who were elevated to 'guest star' status in an issue of the comic by being featured throughout Cheeky's Week, Jim never appeared in more than 2 elements in any issue.  He achieved a place on the cover on 6 occasions, once as Cheeky's stooge in 17 March 1979's Cheeky's Week, and 5 times thereafter, when the Cheeky's Week feature had been replaced by a single front page joke.

In the early days of Cheeky Weekly, several of Cheeky's regular pals would be seen among the toothy funster's classmates whenever the action moved into the classroom.  As the comic neared the end of its run, Jim was quite often the only recognisable character among a bunch of anonymous schoolkids.

Jim never appeared in the 'Ello It's Cheeky feature in Krazy, and his final foray into Cheeky Weekly was in the issue dated 05 January 1980.

Character	Total Issues	First Appearance	Final Appearance
Gunga Jim	63	21-Jan-1978	05-Jan-1980

Gunga Jim - Number of appearances by Element

Element	Number of Appearances
Saturday	18
Friday	12
Interval	8
Monday	7
Cover Feature	6
Tuesday	6
Thursday	5
Sunday	3
Wednesday	3
Cheeky's Week	1
Easter Saturday	1
Saturday - April Fool's Day	1
Sunday evening	1

Gunga Jim - Number of appearances by Page

Page	Number of Appearances
25	16
1	7
30	7
12	6
28	6
31	6
2	3
7	3
8	3
29	3
6	2
15	2
19	2
26	2
4	1
20	1
22	1
32	1

Count of elements by artist

Character	Artist	Total Elements
Gunga Jim	Frank McDiarmid	33
Gunga Jim	Frank McDiarmid pencils	17
Gunga Jim	Mike Lacey	12
Gunga Jim	Barrie Appleby	5
Gunga Jim	Jim Watson	2
Gunga Jim	Dick Millington	2
Gunga Jim	Unknown Cheeky Artist 1	1