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Welcome to the Cheeky Weekly blog!
Cheeky Weekly ™ REBELLION PUBLISHING LTD, COPYRIGHT ©  REBELLION PUBLISHING LTD, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED was a British children's comic with cover dates spanning 22 October 1977 to 02 February 1980.

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Wednesday 5 January 2011

The features - Pin-Up Pal

The Pin-Up Pal feature presented a series of full-colour posters that featured Cheeky, his pals and certain characters with a tangential connection to Cheeky's Week.

The first Pin-Up Pal was Cheeky himself, in the debut issue of Cheeky Weekly. The poster was located at the middle of the comic, and so benefited from being spread across 2 pages. The following two issues included 2-page centre-spread posters of 6 Million Dollar Gran and Mustapha Million respectively. All the subsequent Pin-Up Pal posters were single pages only, but all were full colour.  After the Mustapha Million poster in the 05 November 1977 issue, there was a break of several weeks until the next poster, which featured Lily Pop, appeared in the comic dated 18 February 1978.  Thereafter the posters appeared on average twice a month (although this figure is skewed slightly by the fact that no P-UPs appeared in October and November 1978) until 06 January 1979, from which date a Pin-Up Pal appeared in every issue until the feature ended with the Skateboard Squad poster in the comic dated 31 March 1979.

As mentioned above, some of the characters featured on the Pin-Up Pal pages were not actually inhabitants of Cheeky's universe.  6 Million Dollar Gran was linked to Cheeky's Week by being a character from a TV programme, despite being shown in the background of a Skateboard Squad story.  Mustapha Million, The Elephant from Elephant On The Run, Disaster Des and the Why, Dad Why pair were all characters from The Mystery Comic which Cheeky would track down and read each week.

Interestingly, Paddywack existed in a quantum-particle-like indeterminate state in Cheeky's universe, appearing both as a character drawn by Doodle Doug and as an actual inhabitant of Cheeky's world, interacting with the toothy funster during the cinema interval in the comic dated 02 September 1978.
 
The artwork for the majority of the posters was specially prepared, but those featuring Baker's Boy, Square Eyes, Dan-Dan The Lavender Man and the Skateboard Squad were copy-and-paste jobs from comic panels, sourced from Tuesday 11 November 1978, Friday 25 November 1978, Thursday 25 November 1978 and the Squad's strip 03 February 1979 respectively. Those same four images had previously been used in the Friends of Cheeky Snap Game that commenced in the comic dated 13 January 1979.

Pin-Up Pal was one of the most stable of Cheeky Weekly's features in terms of location - for 35 of the issues in which it appeared it occupied page 32 (aka the back cover).  In the issue dated 09 December 1978 it appeared on page 28 which was the back cover, as that week's issue had a reduced page count due to industrial action.  The 4 other occasions on which Pin-Up Pals appeared on pages other than 32 were in the first 3 issues of the comic in which, as already mentioned, the feature appeared across centre pages 16 and 17, and also the issue dated 16 September 1978 (see below).

Though it appeared in 39 issues, the Pin-Up Pal feature actually featured in the comic 40 times.  How so?  Well, the issue dated 16 September 1978 featured two separate Pin-Up Pal posters, one featuring Calculator Kid (drawn by Frank McDiarmid although the regular CK strip was by Terry Bave), and the other showing Disco Kid strutting his funky stuff.  That week the first of the centre pages was taken up with the final, full-colour part of the cut-out Crack A Joke game, leaving a single, full-colour page available.  That page was allocated to the Calculator Kid poster (which features then-Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey among those queuing up to get their figures, in Healey's case, the budget, sorted out by Charlie's calculator), while the Disco Kid poster occupied the usual Pin-Up Pal location, the back cover.
Of course, in saying the feature appeared 40 times, I am counting the 3 centre-spread posters as single appearances.

Frank McDiarmid drew 32 of the posters.  For the breakdown of the remaining artists, please see the table below.  As you'll see, all the posters whose subject was not an inhabitant of Cheeky's Week were drawn by their respective regular artists.

After the Pin-Up Pal series finished, The Burpo Special took up residence on the back page, appearing there 12 times until displaced by Snail of The Century, which appeared on page 32 in 25 issues.

You can see a gallery of the Pin-Up Pal posters at Bruce's blog.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                   

Feature Artist Number of Issues First Appearance Final Appearance
Pin-up pal CheekyFrank McDiarmid122-Oct-197722-Oct-1977
Pin-up pal 6 Million Dollar GranIan Knox129-Oct-197729-Oct-1977
Pin-up pal Mustapha MillionReg Parlett105-Nov-197705-Nov-1977
Pin-up pal Lily PopFrank McDiarmid118-Feb-197818-Feb-1978
Pin-up pal Jogging JeremyFrank McDiarmid125-Feb-197825-Feb-1978
Pin-up pal The VicarFrank McDiarmid111-Mar-197811-Mar-1978
Pin-up pal Baby BurpoFrank McDiarmid118-Mar-197818-Mar-1978
Pin-up pal Buster the BuskerFrank McDiarmid125-Mar-197825-Mar-1978
Pin-up pal Auntie DaisyFrank McDiarmid101-Apr-197801-Apr-1978
Pin-up pal Sid the Street SweeperFrank McDiarmid108-Apr-197808-Apr-1978
Pin-up pal LouiseFrank McDiarmid115-Apr-197815-Apr-1978
Pin-up pal Constable ChuckleFrank McDiarmid122-Apr-197822-Apr-1978
Pin-up pal UrsulaFrank McDiarmid129-Apr-197829-Apr-1978
Pin-up pal Six-Gun SamFrank McDiarmid113-May-197813-May-1978
Pin-up pal Granny GumdropFrank McDiarmid120-May-197820-May-1978
Pin-up pal Posh ClaudeFrank McDiarmid127-May-197827-May-1978
Pin-up pal Do-Good DoraFrank McDiarmid110-Jun-197810-Jun-1978
Pin-up pal Yikky-BooFrank McDiarmid117-Jun-197817-Jun-1978
Pin-up pal Bump-Bump BernieFrank McDiarmid129-Jul-197829-Jul-1978
Pin-up pal LibbyFrank McDiarmid105-Aug-197805-Aug-1978
Pin-up pal TeacherFrank McDiarmid112-Aug-197812-Aug-1978
Pin-up pal HermanFrank McDiarmid119-Aug-197819-Aug-1978
Pin-up pal PetulaFrank McDiarmid126-Aug-197826-Aug-1978
Pin-up pal Disco KidFrank McDiarmid116-Sep-197816-Sep-1978
Pin-up pal Calculator KidFrank McDiarmid116-Sep-197816-Sep-1978
Pin-up pal Snoozin' SusanFrank McDiarmid123-Sep-197823-Sep-1978
Pin-up pal Flash HarryFrank McDiarmid109-Dec-197809-Dec-1978
Pin-up pal The ElephantRobert Nixon106-Jan-197906-Jan-1979
Pin-up pal Crunching ChrisFrank McDiarmid113-Jan-197913-Jan-1979
Pin-up pal Disaster DesMike Lacey120-Jan-197920-Jan-1979
Pin-up pal PaddywackJack Clayton127-Jan-197927-Jan-1979
Pin-up pal TubNigel Edwards103-Feb-197903-Feb-1979
Pin-up pal Baker's BoyFrank McDiarmid110-Feb-197910-Feb-1979
Pin-up pal Square EyesFrank McDiarmid117-Feb-197917-Feb-1979
Pin-up pal Dr BraincellFrank McDiarmid124-Feb-197924-Feb-1979
Pin-up pal Dan-Dan The Lavender ManFrank McDiarmid103-Mar-197903-Mar-1979
Pin-up pal Why Dad WhyJohn K. Geering110-Mar-197910-Mar-1979
Pin-up pal The CommissionaireFrank McDiarmid117-Mar-197917-Mar-1979
Pin-up pal Uncle HamishFrank McDiarmid124-Mar-197924-Mar-1979
Pin-up pal Skateboard SquadJimmy Hansen131-Mar-197931-Mar-1979
                                                                                                                                                             
FeatureFirst AppearanceFinal AppearanceTotal IssuesTotal Issues Missed In RunPage History
Pin-up pal22-Oct-7731-Mar-79393416,17,28,32

Issues Missed In Run
12-Nov-77
19-Nov-77
26-Nov-77
03-Dec-77
10-Dec-77
17-Dec-77
24-Dec-77
31-Dec-77
07-Jan-78
14-Jan-78
21-Jan-78
28-Jan-78
04-Feb-78
11-Feb-78
04-Mar-78
06-May-78
03-Jun-78
24-Jun-78
01-Jul-78
08-Jul-78
15-Jul-78
22-Jul-78
02-Sep-78
09-Sep-78
30-Sep-78
07-Oct-78
14-Oct-78
21-Oct-78
28-Oct-78
04-Nov-78
11-Nov-78
18-Nov-78
25-Nov-78
02-Dec-78

 .

2 comments:

  1. Niblet, don't you mean "Square Eyes" instead of "Four Eyes".

    BTW, The gallery is now 100% complete, thanks to the efforts of Jeremy Summers and from my own collection.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Oops, of course I meant Square Eyes. Thanks for the heads-up, now changed it.

    ReplyDelete