EVERY week, many readers settle down to read the Sunday newspapers which, in my youth, was something of a tradition in the Riddle household. My thoughts today turn to another famous man from Hartlepool whose work featured not only in British newspapers but was syndicated around the world. I am, of course, referring to the famous cartoonist Reg Smythe, the creator of Andy Capp.
Reg Smythe was born in Hartlepool on 10, July 1917. He attended Galleys Field School in Old Hartlepool, but left, aged just 14, to work as an errand boy for a butcher.
In 1936, with the shipyards idle and, after a long period on the dole, Smythe “decided to get out of it” and joined the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers. He was sent to Egypt. Smythe remained with his regiment during the Second World War, acting as a machine-gunner in North Africa and, in 1945, achieved the rank of Sergeant. Reg also submitted cartoons to Cairo magazines.
After demobilisation in 1946, Smythe left Hartlepool and took a job as a telephone clerk for the GPO in London. He began contributing occasional cartoons to specialist journals, such as the Fish Trader’s Gazette and Draper’s Record, and also sketched council meetings for local papers. “I was never a very good artist and couldn’t get the councillors’ faces right,” he remembered: “So I did them from the back!”
Reg was a frequent contributor to the Daily Mirror’s “Laughter Column” and, in 1954, the art editor, Philip Zec, asked him to contribute a daily cartoon under the title “Laughter At Work.” Three years later, Smythe was asked to create “a special humorous character for the Manchester edition who would appear each day on the ‘Laughter’ page.” The letter with this request reached Smythe on a holiday visit to his mother in Hartlepool and he cut short his holiday – creating the flat-capped, pigeon-fancying, beer-swilling, work-shy Northerner on his way back to London. Yes, Andy Capp was born on the A1! Smythe’s mother Florence, may also have been the inspiration for Andy’s wife.
Andy Capp, although created for the Northern market, quickly spread to other editions of the Daily Mirror and, from 1961-65, was voted “Best Strip Cartoon of the Year”.
By 1964, “Andy Capp” was being syndicated worldwide and was proving very popular in the United States, where it was first run by the Chicago Sun-Times. By this time, Smythe was being paid around £8,000 a year, but a chance meeting with an American cartoonist in London showed him just what he could be earning. Smythe spent that afternoon in a meeting at the Daily Mirror, with a lawyer, after which his salary was increased to £25,000 a year, plus a percentage of the income from the popular Andy Capp annuals published in Britain.
In 1976, Smythe returned to live in Hartlepool, which he felt had changed very little since his youth, despite the decline of its heavy industry. “The mindset’s exactly the same”, he later claimed: “I can still go down to the Boilermakers’ Club and get two or three ideas just listening to the conversation.”
Andy Capp was now being used to advertise beer, Post Office bonds, etc. and, in 1982, became the star of the musical Andy Capp, featuring Tom Courtenay and with music by Alan Price.
In 1983, in a move that pleased his syndicators, both Smythe and Andy Capp gave up smoking. In 1988, an ITV series based on the character, adapted by Keith Waterhouse and starring James Bolam in the title role.
In politics, Reg claimed to be a Socialist.
Reg died from cancer at his Hartlepool home in June 1998.
At the time of his death, the strip was being syndicated to 1,700 newspapers in 52 countries, had been translated into 14 languages and was read by 250 million people. Smythe continued to draw until just a few days before his death and left over a year’s supply of unpublished Andy Capp strips.
The international appeal of Andy Capp has proved remarkably durable.
In 2010, the strip was accidentally omitted from an issue of the local paper in Pennsylvania. The editor found himself inundated with “profanity-laced” phone calls. He said: “One or two of them said ‘Andy Capp’ is the only reason they buy the paper”.
Who could believe that a comic strip could mean so much to so many? Particularly this comic strip, as Smythe himself admitted of Andy Capp, “He may be a horrible little man – but he’s been very good to me.”
Could I respectfully suggest to Hartlepool Council that the 10th of July be declared Andy Capp Day and we all pop to the statue outside “The Pot House” to drink a toast to a famous son of Hartlepool?
Author: John
Author of Around The World In 80 Years