The Case of the Stand-Up Comic

On 13 February 1989, at least if Amazon is to be believed, The Utterly, Utterly Amusing and Pretty Damn Definitive Comic Relief Revue Book was released into the world, collecting sketches and songs from the last 30 years of comedy. Song lyrics from Spitting Image rub shoulders with transcripts from At Last the 1948 Show and Fry and Laurie's days in the Footlights. Grant Naylor, the Goodies, Bob Newhart, Victoria Wood and Douglas Adams are just some of the names thanked for letting their material be used. But what we're interested in is the contents of page 42.

Following on from our success in working out exactly which issue of the Beezer is visible in One Foot in the Algarve, can we work out which issue of the Beano was used for this photoshoot?

There is one thing that immediately narrows the field: the masthead on the issue clearly states "The Comic with Gnasher and Gnipper". And Gnipper was a fairly late addition to the strip; he debuted in the issue dated 10th May, 1986, at the culmination of the Gnational Search for Gnasher. This two-month-long story arc was inspired by similar plotlines and ratings stunts on soap operas such as the siege in Brookside and Deirdre Barlow's affair in Coronation Street, and was the first of several editor Euan Kerr ran in his time (later ones included the 'new-look' Bash Street Kids and the birth of Dennis' sister Bea). The comic encouraged reader participation in the hunt for the missing black-haired Abyssinian wire-haired tripe hound to great success, with updates on the story broadcast on television and radio, DC Thomson's offices being inundated with correspondence and newspaper coverage even reaching The Times. The triumph of this also prompted other experiments with reader interactivity such as Roger the Dodger's Dodge Clinic, a half-page strip based on reader requests to evade responsibility.

Dodge Clinic ran from 1986 to 1992, appended to Roger's main strip (which expanded from one page to a page and a half to accommodate it), although there are a noticeable number of issues where it didn't run and an advert filled the space instead (it became particularly sporadic towards the finish). It also frequently ended with the dodge backfiring in some way, possibly to head off potential complaints about the concept. Later interactive features included Joe King, whose strip was basically a vehicle for readers' jokes (if yours was used you won a Dennis the Menace cycle helmet), and a recurring feature later named "Comic Idol", where several different strips would run for a short period and a public vote decided which would join the comic full-time. The idea survives to this day in Make Me a Menace, where readers send in ideas for characters based on themselves who star in a one-off story.

But anyway, that means this issue must come from somewhere in the two-and-a-bit years between the conclusion of the search and the deadline of The Utterly, Utterly Amusing and Pretty Damn Definitive Comic Relief Revue Book.

And would you believe, thanks to Comic Vine once again, it's issue #2421, dated 10th December, 1988:

Whilst we can't prove it, obviously, the proximity of this issue's date to the original publication of the book would suggest it was the issue currently on sale when the photo was taken. Perhaps we can even imagine someone in the office being dispatched to the nearest newsagent's to pick up a comic for the purpose of taking the photograph.