New Andy Capp Collection Number 1: No. 1 (The Andy Capp Collection)

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ASKED ONCE about what he thinks the appeal of his strip is, Smythe quoted a college professor, who said the strip was “beautifully observed.”

Once I cottoned on to this facet of the strip,” he said, “about Andy being the child and Florrie being the mother — I started to draw her in a more buxom and motherly way. I also made Andy a little smaller. I did this deliberately and after a lot of thought. It works more easily for me when the pair look like mother and child. I think I’m right. Andy would be a totally unlikeable brute if he and Florrie had children to look after.” The GPO work was boring, and he looked for distractions in various extracurricular enterprises that the GPO offered. There were sports groups and drama groups, and he “attached himself to the outer edges of one of the drama groups,” writes Les Lilley in The World of Andy Capp. And Smythe’s father was known to wear a cloth cap. “Even when he played football!” his son claimed. “But on Sundays he would show respect and put on a bowler hat to be posh.”Strips into 2021 and beyond only show credits for writers Goldsmith and Garnett and continue the subtly different style.

The mindset’s exactly the same,” he said. “I can still go down to the Boilermarker’s Club and get two or three ideas just listening to the conversation.” Smythe grew up in Northern England under conditions that made Andy Capp seem like a kindred soul if not an alter ego. “He was my best friend yet,” Smythe once said. Growing into manhood, Smythe was often jobless for long stretches, making him sympathetic to Andy’s situation (which, in Andy’s case, is self-inflicted by preference). But Bill liked the ideas and showed them to Hugh Cudlip. Mr. Cudlip also liked the idea and almost immediately started it off in the northern editions of the Mirror.” Reg Smythe died on 13 June 1998, but the original strip has continued. For some time, the writer and artist were uncredited, but in November 2004 the strip began to carry a credit for Roger Mahoney (artist) and Roger Kettle (writer). Circa 2011, Kettle discontinued his work on the strip and was replaced by Lawrence Goldsmith and Sean Garnett, while Mahoney continued to draw. The appearance of the characters did not change perceptibly. The type of humor I purvey has nothing to do with region [despite the strip’s Northern origins]. It has to do with a man and his wife. It’s their association.”Victor E. Neuburg (1983). The Popular Press Companion to Popular Literature. Popular Press. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-0-87972-233-3.