B&T

In 1990, two of D. C. Thomson's remaining weekly humour titles, the Beezer (running since 1956) and the Topper (running since 1953) merged to form a publication which was called, not unreasonably, Beezer and Topper. The nature of the combined comic was a little different to other comics mergers -- usually the 'junior' title would merge into the 'senior' one, but these two titles got equal billing in a publication which was essentially considered a new comic in its own right, starting the numbering back at issue 1.

The Topper and the Beezer had arguably not moved with the times in the way D. C.'s other publications, the Beano and the Dandy, had, and this joining of forces saw several long-serving stories -- some of which had been running since the beginning -- get quietly retired. Amongst the stories not carried forward were Ginger, who had been the Beezer's cover star for some 28 of its 37 years, The Badd Lads, The Hillies and the Billies, Hungry Horace and Figaro, whilst several others would be retooled to better appeal to a modern audience, and a variety of entirely new strips also appeared.

Beezer and Topper would last for 153 issues and just under three years, and then both titles disappeared from weekly newsstands for good, although the Beezer Summer Specials and Christmas annuals would continue to be issued until 2002 (and the quarterly reprint titles The Best of the Beezer and The Best of the Topper until 1996 when they were supplanted by the all-purpose monthly Classics From the Comics); several of the 'legacy' characters moved over to the Beano and Dandy, but for others B&T would prove to be their last chance saloon.

The original plan here had been to scan in one issue from early in the run, to cover all the characters who'd crossed over from Beezer and Topper (some of them were phased out later on, whilst other new stories were chopped and changed). It wouldn't have been anywhere near as representative of the whole run as our look at Hoot was, and it'd probably have been worth scanning in one of the final issues later on to compare.

However, upon unearthing the issues in my possession I discovered that B&T had such a large roster of stories that most of them didn't appear every week, so I went for a different approach: from across five different issues, here's one example of each 'legacy' character, and a selection of notable strips that were unique to the merger.

Just Ask For International Broadcasts Of South By South East

You remember that thing that sort of took over this blog for a period of several years where I was looking for (and eventualy found) the missing Children's ITV serial The Diamond Brothers: South by South East, don't you? Yes? Marvellous. If not, go here, go to the oldest post and work your way forwards from there. I promise you it's worth your while.

Anyway, I have some newly unearthed information on international broadcasts which you may as well have, as these airings would have used the original version of episode 3, and anything that could possibly help me find it is worth a try.

American viewers would have seen the show on the Disney Channel weekly from 7 April to 12 May 1993; the broadcast of episode 1 was preceded by a showing of Just Ask for Diamond, under its international title of Diamond's Edge.

The other thing is a bit more esoteric, but an Indian viewer got in touch to say they recall the show being broadcast on Saturday afternoons on a channel called StarPlus; they can't recall the exact year, but it may have been somewhere between 1992 and 1994. Anyone able to point me in the direction of some archive Indian TV listings?

Check, Please

Goodness Gracious Me was a groundbreaking sketch show that popularised British-Asian comedy and helped make household names of people like Sanjeev Bhaskar.

In the fourth episode of Series 1 (TX: 02/02/98), in the "Bhangra Muffins" sketch, Kulvinder Ghur is reading a copy of the Beano.

We get a nice close look at it at the start of the sketch, so through the magic of iPlayer it's pretty easy to tell it's issue #2882, dated 11/10/97:

A valuable clue as to the recording dates of Goodness Gracious Me, to be sure, but this issue was originally sold with a free lolly, and the issue seen onscreen appears to have had the sticky tape attaching the free gift to the issue very carefully removed to avoid ripping or damaging the cover.

So we can figure that a production runner sent to the nearest newsagent's had an interesting afternoon, if nothing else.

Numskull Valley

The Numskulls, a comic strip about the microscopic humanoids everyone has living inside them who control all your bodily functions, launched in the Beezer in 1962, some six years into the comic's run. (The above strip hails from the Beezer Book 1975, but you can see one of the very first editions here.) If you've picked up a copy of the Beano at any point in the last thirty years, you'll probably be aware that the strip is still running there to this day -- indeed, it is the only strip to originate in the Beezer that has survived to the last of the weekly humour anthology comics still going. The route it took to the present, however, isn't exactly straightforward.

Potato Man

On the 15th June 1992, then-Vice President of the United States Dan Quayle, on the campaign trail for that year's presidential election, visits Muñoz Rivera Elementary School and commits one of the most famous political gaffes in history when he "corrects" a 12-year-old pupil's spelling of 'potato' to 'potatoe'.

Ten days later, on the 25th June, Fox airs a repeat of The Simpsons; appropriately enough, the episode is "Two Cars In Every Garage, Three Eyes On Every Fish". The blackboard joke in the opening sequence is usually "I will not xerox my butt", but for this repeat, a new joke is hastily added: "'potato', not 'potatoe'".

This alternate blackboard -- seen on that repeat, and that repeat only -- has become one of the few pieces of Simpsons miscellany completely lost to time. It's frustrating, because the joke was reported in advance in newspapers, and you'd expect someone to have their VCR switched on for it. I've made more than one attempt to track it down in the past, but as of yet things haven't gone anywhere.

One thing I did think to do, though, was check alt.tv.simpsons for any contemporary posts regarding the joke. Multiple posts describe the blackboard as looking very last-minute, saying that the text visibly shimmered or moved around:

Great bit on the Simpson's tonight....
For those of you who don't watch the show, a running joke in the opening credits involves Bart writing something on the blackboard over and over. Past sentences have included "I will not expose the faculty's ignorance.". Well, though tonight's show was actually a repeat, they did change the sentence on the blackboard. Looked like a last minute thing, since the blackboard portion of the shot shimmered badly.
Tonight's slogan: "Potato" not "Potatoe".