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

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Well, I’d sketched this little man as a working-class type wearing a cloth cap, so I thought the name Cap would be as good a name for him as any. Cap? Capp? Fred Capp perhaps? Then, as an afterthought, I drew his face with the cap pulled well down over his eyes, obscuring the top half of his face. How about Bill Capp? But neither Fred nor Bill seemed to have the right ring to it. 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.

a b Leatherdale, Duncan (23 March 2016). "The mirth and misogyny of Andy Capp". BBC Online . Retrieved 23 March 2016. 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.”With his boozy exploits, cheeky humour and expert job dodging, flat-capped legend Andy Capp has been entertaining millions of readers since the 50s. A statue of Andy Capp was erected in Hartlepool on 28 June 2007. It was sculpted by Jane Robbins. [14] Book collections and reprints [ edit ] United Kingdom [ edit ] To Americans, judging by the values they say they live by, Andy Capp represents everything they are taught from infancy to eschew energetically wherever possible. He’s an anti-role model. Yet despite his wholly unsavory behavior, he was immediately hugely popular in this country—a roaring success. Perhaps because readers saw him as “getting away with it”—with everything we’re all taught we shouldn’t do. I realized long ago,” Smythe said, “that if I gave the character my likes and dislikes, I wouldn’t have to make a conscious effort to remember anything I had ever written or drawn. I wouldn’t have to keep a reference file. Andy’s ways of looking at things are therefore, by and large, my ways of looking at things. There are exceptions to this rule, the most important of which is the fact that he drinks beer while I prefer gin and tonic. But I can afford it, and he can’t, can he? If you take the time to make a study of my characters,” he says, “the character that is nicest and best is Florrie. Why, therefore, am I never accused of being a feminist? She is my creation as well, isn’t she?”

Shenton, Mark (9 February 2016). "Andy Capp the Musical review at Finborough Theatre, London – 'utterly charming' ". The Stage. London . Retrieved 23 March 2016. He took a job as errand boy for a butcher. At the age of 16, he was forced to quit the job: his employer wanted to avoid paying a special tax he would be liable for in employing anyone 16 or older. For the next three years, Smythe was “on the dole” (welfare): he couldn’t find work. 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.” The miracles,” he elaborated, “were there to get attention. Nobody would’ve taken notice of Jesus Christ had he been an ordinary fellow and not performed his miracles. He cured a blind man—just like that! That’s the sort of thing that attracts attention and gets people interested. And it’s the same with Andy Capp. He attracts your attention with his boozing and all that.Demobilized in 1946, Smythe returned to Hartlepool, but, unable to find work, he soon left for London. There, after an extended period of unemployment, he found a job at the General Post Office in 1950. He also married Vera Whittaker.