A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: CHARLIE WILLIAMS

Charlie Williams belongs to the category of strips that had a famous film or TV comedian for the main character and were so common in old British comics. Buster had a lot of these throughout the sixties. IPC attempted to revive the genre in 1973, first by launching the Goodies in COR!!, and then including Charlie Williams in SHIVER AND SHAKE where the feature was part of the non-horror SHAKE section.

Wikipedia tells us that Charlie Williams was a mixed-race English professional footballer who later became Britain's first well-known black stand-up comedian. He became famous from his appearances on Granada Television's The Comedians and ATV's The Golden Shot, delivering his catchphrase, "me old flower" in his broad Yorkshire accent. Here is what I found of him on YouTube:

I have to admit that the Yorkshire accent is a bit tricky for me and I can’t understand every word the man says; also, his wild burst of laughter signalling the end of a joke is a bit overenthusiastic, but otherwise I find him quite fun to watch. Why they decided to turn him into a character of a children’s comic is a bit of a mystery to me and I am not too surprised it only managed such a short run…

Charlie Williams ran without a break in SHIVER AND SHAKE issues 22 - 47 (from August 4th, 1973 until January 26th, 1974) when the prototype of its main character was at the pinnacle of his comedy career. In the strip Charlie was a regular customer of the employment agency who took a new odd job every week. He tried everything from being a zoo animal keeper to room decorator, from Santa Claus to human cannon ball in a circus act.

By the early 70s racial stereotyping had disappeared from British children’s comics

but since Williams' comedy is said to have often been at his own expense, and particularly his colour, three or four of the episodes in SHIVER AND SHAKE were given that long-forgotten mildly racial twist:

As can be seen from the two examples above, Charlie Williams was illustrated by two different artists. Of the 26 episodes in SHIVER AND SHAKE weeklies, 16 were by Alf Saporito and the rest (mostly towards the end of the run) by Sid Burgon. Throughout its short run the strip was a one-pager but the last instalment in issue 47 was two pages long. In fact it consisted of two separate episodes and Williams’ adventures were given a proper ending in the second one when he was finally invited to join the local theatre as a stand-up comedian:

A LOOK AT SHIVER & SHAKE STRIPS: LOLLY POP

The first inside pages of SHAKE section were reserved for Lolly Pop, a strip named after one of the two main characters – billionaire owner of countless factories and businesses of all kinds, forever anxious to make more ‘brass’. Pop was the perfect miser and penny-pincher as far as other people were concerned and he’d never spare a penny for the modest needs of his lad Archie. Judging by his own words, Pop had lived a rough childhood of deprivation and was reluctant to share his wealth with anyone, not even his son.

Weekly episodes usually followed the same basic pattern: Archie would ask Lolly Pop to buy him something he desperately needed (like a pair of new shoes so that he could go to a friend’s party because his old pair leaked) but skinflint Pop would refuse, telling him that he’d never had the luxury when he was a lad. Archie would then try to do without the goods or secretly help himself to tiny bits of Pop’s wealth but would inevitably find himself in situations that resulted in disproportionate damages to Pop. The damages could have been easily avoided, had the meanie forked out at the very start. In the end Pop usually bought Archie a lot more than he had initially asked for, in hope to avoid trouble in the future.

Archie never caused trouble deliberately: he was kind of jinxed with bad luck and could always be trusted to accidentally pull the wrong lever that put factory machinery in some crazy mode, etc. Pop didn’t take long to realize that allowing Archie to set foot in any of his factories and business premises was a sure recipe to disaster. Therefore he tried to prevent Archie from getting anywhere near by using alarms, hiring private detectives and even the army to keep the lad away. Since his precautions usually led to nothing, more and more weekly episodes ended with enraged Pop’s attempts to get physical on Archie.

As can be seen from the three examples shown above, Lolly Pop was illustrated by as many as three different artists. Reg Parlett (although initially I assumed it was Arthur Martin but the comments below and some further research confirmed I was mistaken), Robert Nixon and Sid Burgon took turns drawing the strip for nearly a year until issue 43 that marked the point from which Sid Burgon took over as the sole illustrator (except for one occasion when he was ghosted by someone else in issue 62). Among the things that I like about Sid Burgon’s Lolly Pop are the large detailed panels depicting the catastrophic effects of Archie’s meddling. They became an attribute of the strip later on in WHOOPEE! but some early examples can also be found in SHIVER AND SHAKE:

Lolly Pop belonged to the category of class warfare strips that were so common in IPC comics of the 70s. The feature occupied the first two inside pages of SHAKE section (except in issues 53-56 when the regular order was upset by Frankie Stein Mini pull-out booklet and Lolly Pop suddenly found itself in SHIVER section towards the end of the paper), so presumably the editors had high expectations for the strip. They proved to be correct: Lolly Pop continued throughout the run of SHIVER AND SHAKE and migrated to the combined WHOOPEE! AND SHIVER & SHAKE where it appeared regularly until 1985 when WHOOPEE was absorbed by WHIZZER AND CHIPS which then became its third home, although I don’t know for how long.

I will sign off with a couple of oddities from the SHIVER AND SHAKE run of Lolly Pop. The lovely set from issue 71 is unusual because Archie proves to have inherited some of Pop’s entrepreneurial skills: 

... while the fragment with the rude finger from SHIVER AND SHAKE issue 47 speaks for itself: