Slob City Rovers! (1995)

Daily Star  21st March 1995

Here's a strip I'd forgotten about, that I found today. Back in the early 1990s, I was a contributor to two Viz-type comics, Spit! and C'Mon Ref! Both were edited by Graham Hey and Chris Whitehead, who often supplied the scripts. Good fun stuff. One of the strips I regularly drew was Whitley Baywatch, created by Graham, about two boozy, leery, layabouts in charge of beach safety in Whitley Bay. 

In 1995, Graham and Chris were commissioned to devise a comedy football section for the Daily Star, which they called Bite Yer Legs. It ran in the paper every Tuesday, and I was commissioned to write and draw a strip featuring the Whitley Baywatch characters. 

Daily Star   28th March 1995

The strip was called Slob City Rovers, and you can see three of the strips here. I didn't actually do many. Four in total if memory serves correctly. I don't remember why it was dropped so suddenly but I'd guess it was due to budget cuts. So, my initial enthusiasm at being in a national newspaper was quickly cut short. That's the comics biz, and you never truly know what goes on behind the scenes. Sometimes it's budgetary, sometimes it's office politics, sometimes it's people telling tales. Happily, I've managed to avoid such nonsense during most of my career, but it does happen. Perhaps in a few years I'll spill the beans in an autobiography. 

Daily Star 4th April 1995