'E's Luv'ly

He is a 5-ft. 4-in., 46-year-old, pot bellied, wife-beating little layabout. His floppy cap not only hides his eyes but never comes off -- either in bed or on his rare visits to the tub. A cigarette is permanently glued to his lip. His bulbous nose glows whenever he has a snootful, which is nearly every night. He has no discernible trade and lives on the dole as if he had earned it. He is selfish, improvident, coarse, arrogant and bullying. "Don't stand out there in the cold, lass," he says to his sister-in-law, come to pay a visit. "Buzz off." His name is Andy Capp, and he is the newest folk hero of the comic strips.

By last week this essentially British cartoon character was appearing in 170 newspapers in 31 countries, including the U.S.--where, in a single month, his syndication has climbed to 90-odd papers. Wherever Andy is imported, readers clasp him instantly as one of their own. Said an editor of Istanbul's Hareket Gazetesi: "Andy is as much Turkish as he is English, and he is probably Greek, Italian and Polish too. Our readers got addicted to him in a week. As one of them put it, he is what every man wants to be in his spare time."

Snooker & Stout. Spare time is Andy's chief possession, and he employs it outrageously. "Ah, well, I can't idle away a luv'ly morning like this," he muses, lying abed with the sun high. But the only way he knows to make money is to gamble. "Flo!" he shouts. "Fetch me football pools coupon up." He is no help around the house. "I thought I asked yer to notice when the pan boiled over," says Flo. "I did," says her spouse. "It was a quarter past eleven."

His interests are apparently confined to snooker, stout, brawling and uninterrupted leisure. Sex inflames him the wrong way. "Second time this week I've seen 'im kiss 'is missus," he observes sourly of a neighbor. "The man's a sex maniac." When Flo suggests a night out, Andy concurs: "If yer get 'ome before me, leave the lights on." But his long-suffering mate wouldn't change him for the world. "Don't think I 'aven't tried it, Rube," she says to a friend. "But bein' away from 'im is almost as miserable as bein' with 'im."

Hard by the Tees. This raffish end product of Britain's welfare state was born in the mind of a onetime butcher's helper who strayed into the graphic arts quite by chance. Britain's largest daily, the London Daily Mirror (circ. 4,631,000), wanted to woo Northern English readers with a new comic strip set in that grimy part of the island, and Freelance Artist Reginald Smythe just happened to be available for the job. Smythe had grown up in the north of England, in an industrial blight called Hartlepool, hard by the River Tees; although he had escaped into the army, he still spoke the Teeside tongue. Andy and company were created more from memory than imagination.

To the delighted surprise of the Mirror, which doubted that Andy's appeal would survive south of the Midlands, he was instantly popular all over the island. Soon the strip crossed to the mainland and picked up such pseudonyms as Kasket Karl (Denmark), Tuff a Victor (Sweden), and Jan Met de Pet (The Netherlands). When Andy spanned the Atlantic to join the stable of New York's Hall Syndicate, his success was equally smashing. Among the charter subscribers: the Washington Post, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Los Angeles Times, New York Post, and Marshalltown (Iowa) Times-Republican.

A Common Fondness. British newspapers do not share syndication income with the artist, as do U.S. papers, and Andy has enriched the Mirror rather more than his creator. Reg Smythe does not even get anything from the considerable sale of Andy Capp books. But Smythe, who draws a $25,000 salary that is handsome by British standards, hardly considers himself shortchanged. He has just renewed his Mirror contract for another five years, and he remains as fond of Andy as Andy is of himself. After all, it was Artist Smythe who put these words in the mouths of Andy and Flo:

"C'mon, Andy, just for daft--say I'm luv'ly."

"Be'ave yerself, Flo, I'm gettin' embarrassed."

"Go on, say it just this once an' I'll never ask yer again."

"Oh, all right. . . I'm luv'ly."

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