The Dandy and the Beano -- Fifty Golden Years was published in 1987 to mark the golden anniversary of the Dandy (its sister publication the Beano having begun just a year later). It was I believe D. C. Thomson's first publication devoted to reprints of classic material from its weekly comics, and a popular one; demand far outstripped supply, necessitating several republications (the book was offered as a competition prize in weekly editions of the Beano and the Dandy for a while afterwards!), and its success led to the creation of the quarterly reprint comics Best of Beezer and Best of Topper the following year, showcasing classics from two titles which got left out of Fifty Golden Years.
In 1996 those two publications were superseded by the monthly Classics From the Comics, which as you can probably guess featured a variety of strips from across most of D. C. Thomson's humour titles (generally mixing big hitters such as Dennis the Menace and Desperate Dan with a rotating selection of more obscure characters). CFtC had an impressive run of nearly a decade and a half, lasting until the end of 2010. The success of Fifty Golden Years also prompted a follow-up book, More From the First 50 Years, in 1989, and that began a tradition that continues to this day: a new hardback book of classic reprints has been published every year.
(I suspect the fact that by the time I started reading comics, there was a 64-page publication of assorted D. C. Thomson archive material available from my newsagent every month, and no equivalent for other companies such as IPC/Fleetway, is a big part of why I've always gravitated towards it more than any other comic publisher... but we can leave the amateur psychoanalysis for another day.)
Looking at Fifty Golden Years, it's clear to see why it was such a big hit; it has high production values, a carefully curated selection of strips, and well-chosen ephemera including original adverts for the first issues has been dug out. It also has a few pages devoted to celebrities sharing their memories of the comics scattered throughout the book.
If your mind immediately snapped to the sort of celebrities who might have been asked to contribute to the book at the time, but in retrospect it's really, really unfortunate that they were, then I'm afraid to say you're correct on two counts, and the presence of one of them is particularly baffling as he is interviewed solely to say he has no childhood recollections of the comics whatsoever, as they weren't available in Australia (as well as the fact that he lent his likeness and some of his characters to strips published by Fleetway in the 80s). Let's move on. This page, showing various famous people photographed reading the comic, seems pretty safe to reproduce here:
I've identified a few issues of the comics seen in books and TV shows in my time. What are we dealing with here, then?
Well, the fact that Geoffrey Palmer is reading a copy of the Beano isn't really the most interesting thing about the picture of him, but for the record that's issue #2254, dated September 28th, 1985. The show he's in rehearsal for is Fairly Secret Army -- a sort-of spin-off with the serial numbers filed off from The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, also written by David Nobbs. (Regards to Doc Wallace and Dan McKee for this.) Once you consult an episode guide for the show, this is quite clearly a picture from rehearsals for the fourth episode of the second and final series, "One Mistake, Whole Caboosh Plughole", which was originally broadcast on the 22nd September, 1986. So if nothing else, we've learnt there seems to have been quite a long time between production and broadcast on Fairly Secret Army, assuming that was the issue on sale at the time.
All the other issues on display are the same one: Issue #2304, dated September 13th, 1986. BBC Genome tells us that Saturday Superstore did not return for its fifth and final series until September 27th, 1986, and it's tempting to assume they took a very recent issue along to get the photos of Sarah Greene, Mike Reid and John Craven at the same session. When the photo of Jimmy Tarbuck was taken seems a bit more of a mystery (as is the fact he has two copies of the same issue), but it does seem plausible that the Geoffrey Palmer photo was taken separately and co-opted as part of a planned feature showing celebrities reading the Beano. Perhaps it's just an impromptu photo the book's editor happened to have... which seems to make it much funnier if so.
It's funny, I think I might have had this in 1987, but my memories of it are so vague that possibly I just read someone else's copy. It's exactly the kind of thing I always loved to read, so if I'd actually owned one, I'd probably still have it today. The choice of celebrities to interview was always a bit strange, but I remember being impressed that Bill Owen was so old, his childhood even pre-dated the Beano!
ReplyDeleteI'll tell you one thing I've always wanted to find, that you might have seen in your travels through old Beanos - it was a regular boast in the Beano that Mark Hamill had joined the Dennis the Menace Fan Club, and one of the first mentions of that was illustrated by a classic little cartoon. Clearly written by someone who had no idea who this celebrity was and could only make deductions from the words "Star Wars" and "Luke Skywalker" that had been thrown at him, the editor quipped that he'd better remember not to pin the badge to his spacesuit the next time he goes spacewalking, accompanied by picture of an astronaut being blown through space by the air escaping his punctured suit!
I'm pretty certain Hamill does get mentioned in one of the early reprint books -- possibly the second one, "More From the First 50 Years" -- perhaps with that very page reproduced... I definitely feel like I've seen it somewhere.
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