With his boozy exploits, cheeky humour and expert job dodging, flat-capped legend Andy Capp has been entertaining millions of readers since the 50s.
Now, Andy is celebrating 65 years since he first dawdled, fag hanging from his lip, into the pages of the Daily Mirror.
At the height of his popularity, the comic strip equalled Charles Schulz’s Peanuts for global fame, was syndicated to 1,700 newspapers worldwide and translated into 14 different languages.
The hilariously workshy northerner from Hartlepool, often seen stumbling home late from the pub, also inspired a West End musical, a TV series starring Likely Lads actor James Bolam and a stage play with Tim Healy.
He was also the unlikely hero of a 1980s computer game, on Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum, in which players had to borrow money to replenish Andy’s alcohol supply while avoiding fights with his wife Flo and the police.
But despite worldwide success and a host of awards, the man behind the famous nose, jacket, scarf and hat shunned the limelight.
Andy Capp’s creator Reg Smythe preferred to shut himself away in his den and draw, rather than reap the rewards of his global success – although he did accept one offer to meet Labour PM Harold Wilson, who was mentioned in one cartoon when Andy roped him into an excuse for being late home.
Reg wrote, drew, inked and lettered every gag and picture for the 18,000 strips he created over four decades from August 1957.
And when he died, aged 80, in 1998 the legendary cartoonist, who hated the idea of someone else taking over after him, left a stockpile of thousands of extra strips – more than a year’s worth – so he could keep Andy’s story going long after his own had ended.
It’s testimony to his enduring genius that Andy Capp is still going strong, both in the Daily Mirror but also in thousands of newspapers around the world.
Reg’s niece, Helene Elysee, remembers how her uncle “never stopped drawing” and came up with a new cartoon every day for over 40 years.
She says: “The only day he stopped was Christmas Day, and still I remember him scribbling ideas down on bits of paper, noting what people said, anything that could give him an idea.
“His den, where he drew when he was working from home, was fascinating, full of so many joke books, notes and things he cut out of magazines.”
But she insisted that her uncle was nothing like that character he created.
“On the contrary, he was a very smart, sophisticated and good-looking man.
“He loved to dress well, he would never have been seen dead in a flat cap. He did like to gamble, though, and certainly liked a drink.”
Reginald Smyth – he added the ‘e’ for artistic effect – was a cartoonist for the Daily Mirror, where he contributed to the paper’s Laughter Column, when he was asked by editor Hugh Cudlipp to create a northern character for the paper’s Manchester edition.
Helene remembers how he thought up Andy Capp during the seven-hour drive from Hartlepool to London.
She says: “A telegram arrived saying, ‘Get back to London quick and bring an idea for a cartoon’.
“He had to think about it on the A1. He kept pulling in to lay-bys and trying out different things. Several lay-bys later Andy was born.”
Reg once told a colleague that he was inspired by a man he saw at a Hartlepool football match who pocketed his flat cap when it started raining. “You don’t think I’m going to sit in the house all night wearing a wet cap?” he told him.
Others recognised Reg’s late shipwright father Richard in his creation – including his own mother, who was called Florrie and often wore a pinafore and head scarf. Reg never confirmed that, perhaps because in one early cartoon he depicted Andy as a wife-beater, something he later regretted.
The strip was soon sold around the globe, with Andy’s adventures followed by 250 million fans in 52 countries. He became Tuffa Viktor in Sweden, Andy Cappello in Italy and Willi Wacker in Germany, where FC Nuremberg fans made him their mascot.
A 1960s editorial in Istanbul’s Hareket Gazetesi newspaper claimed “Andy is as much Turkish as he is English. And he is probably Greek, Italian and Polish too.”
He also inspired merchandise including a 1973 book using Andy’s exploits to interpret the Bible. When Andy gave up smoking – the same time as Reg – the NHS used it in a campaign.
Helene says Reg, who married Vera in 1948 and never had children, didn’t like the idea that another cartoonist might inherit the strip after he was gone.
She says: “He was not a confrontational man, so his way of fighting it was by drawing more.”
Vera died in 1997. Reg married Jean Marie in 1998, but died later the same year after a battle with lung cancer.
Helene says he only stopped drawing a few days before he died.
“By the time he died that stockpile had gone from hundreds to a few thousands. He wanted Andy to live on.
“In the end it was just Reg and Andy.”
