by Andrew Pilcher

Eurovision

smith-pilcher-954-160513Written and drawn in the run-up to both the referendum about whether we stay inside the EU or not, and the completely unrelated Eurovision Song contest.

That’s Boris Johnson on the telly in the last frame, figurehead of the Leave campaign at the time. OK, get your head round this if you can. I’m writing this from the perspective of early July – we’ve voted to leave the EU. Boris joined the Leave campaign, expecting to lose by a slim amount, calculating that he could take over the Prime Minister David Cameron’s job when he resigned, having lost his authority. However, Britain voted to leave, which he didn’t expect. Cue immediate backpedalling during his victory speech. Cameron resigned, Boris announced his candidacy, and then had to throw in the towel when he was stabbed in the back by his ally, Michael Gove, who announced his own candidacy as someone who actually believed in what he was saying. Gove himself is currently floundering, as he’s now established himself as someone who can’t be trusted, having insisted for all of his career that he didn’t want the Primeminister’s job. So now it looks like we’ve got a contest between a third Leave supporter, Andrea Leadsome, who noone had heard of outside of her constituency until a week ago, and Theresa May, a Home Secretary, despised of by the Police force she is supposedly in charge of. Anyway, that’s the story as of July 4th 2016. Expect everything to change again tomorrow.

As for Eurovision, the UK came 24th out of a field of 26 entries into the final. A few of the national juries voted for us, but none of the phone voters in the real world did. Bland doesn’t work, it turns out. Cocking a snook at your powerful neighbours does, though, as Ukraine won with a protest song about the treatment of the minory populations of the Crimea during the Second World War – something that they insited had no parallels with any more recent events between Ukraine and Russia. Russia came third, and Putin had an enormous (but very manly) huff the day afterwards.

by Andrew Pilcher

Beating about the bush

smith-pilcher-953-160511

by Andrew Pilcher

90 years of the Hastleons

smith-pilcher-952-160509

(Press release for The Hastleons, written by myself and published unedited, including the mysterious extra ‘the’ in the fourth Paragraph by the Hastings Observer who obviously just copied and pasted it into place without reading it.)

The Hastleons, Hastings and St Leonards’ premier amateur musical theatre group are celebrating a milestone in their existence this week.

They have been putting on shows now for 90 years.

This weekend sees ‘The Hastleons at 90‘, a variety show celebrating the past 90 years, being staged at the Stables Theatre in Hastings.

Songs and routines from previous productions will be presented, using the original cast members from the when the shows were originally staged by the group. They will be aided and abetted by an ensemble chorus of current members.

The Hastleons will be delving back to shows they put on as far back as the 1970s, like ‘Oklahoma‘ and ‘South Pacific‘ plus more recent shows put in the last decade such as ‘Beauty and the Beast‘ and ‘Bugsy Malone‘.

Many old names will be returning to grace the stage, such as Steve Corke, now putting on shows at St Mary’s in the Castle with the Renaissance theatre company, and Lucy Andrews, who first played Belle from Beauty and the Beast with the Hastleons, and has just returned from a year in a theme park in Japan where her job was essentially to be Belle.

Devised by the Hastleon’s Chorus Mistress, Clare Adams and choreographed by Chloe Hurst, the show will be compered by veteran Hastleon, Michael Woodhams.

The Hastleons first show was the 1989 piece ‘Veronique’, staged at the Gaiety Theatre on 10th May 1926. The Gaiety was the Hastleons’ home until 1932 when it was converted in to the cinema that is now known as the Odeon. Their production of The Desert Song was the last live show performed at the theatre.

The Hastleons then moved on to the Cinema DeLuxe (now DeLuxe Bingo) on the seafront until 1935. Since 1936, their home has been the White Rock Theatre, apart from a break between 1940 and 1946 when the war interrupted proceedings. Those Hastleons not on active duty abroad spent the war as a concert party entertaining the troops.

For a numbers of years the Hastleons have rehearsed at a number of venues such as the Adelphi and Castle Hotels before moving to Newgate Road in 1971 for nine years. They arrived at their current home, the Hastleon Hall in Bexhill Road, St Leonards, in 1980.

The Hastleons’ next show after this is planned to be ‘Annie’ in October 2016. Audition and rehearsal details will be released shortly.

The main picture is based on the curtain call for Beauty and the Beast, and the proscenium arch and surrounds are based on that of the Hastleons’ usual home at the White Rock Theatre. I’m in the front row, third from the right.

d3s_9073

Photo by Peter Mould

by Andrew Pilcher

Playing with your food

smith-pilcher-951-160506

Drawn on the iPad. To me it’s really obvious, as the lines are freer and more painterly, and the lettering isn’t as precise, but most people can’t tell the difference.

For the next month, the strips will all be drawn by hand, as you’ll see I’m having to add a lot more detail into the settings…

by Andrew Pilcher

Courgetti spaghetti

smith-pilcher-950-160504

Maybe it hasn’t hit the States yet, but at the moment, everything in the UK is now available in spiralized form. Or you can spiralize it yourself with a very expensive spiralizer that you’ll use twice and then put in a cupboard next to the Breville toaster never to be used again. It’ll keep the foodies entertained until they rediscover fondue again (that must be due its once-every-two-decade revival by now, surely?)

by Andrew Pilcher

Thwip!

smith-pilcher-948-160429

When we first discovered that Sunday had injured her tail and was bleeding all over the sofa, we improvised a bandage of our own to try to stem the flow before we took her to the vets. Of couse she coyldn’t feel anything, but she knew there was an unwanted weight at the end of her tail. So, using the remaining working muscles at the base of her tail she just gave the tail a swift flick and sent the sodden bandage flying across the room, much like what you see in panel two. After the third attempt we gave up – she was treating it as a game and her aim was getting better.

by Andrew Pilcher

It’s a drag

smith-pilcher-947-160427

Note the burnt-out hoverboard in the pile of discarded wheeled things.

by Andrew Pilcher

Remix 2

smith-pilcher-946-160425

Once again, a remix of an old Millie strip – in this case it’s the last one from this sequence…

91-8b

If there’s anyone who is unfamiliar with Millie, the strip I wrote for the Daily Mirror in the 1990s (so that’ll be all of you, then) you can find scans of the first few years of it on the old blog, starting HERE.

by Andrew Pilcher

Remix

smith-pilcher-945-160422

Actually a remix of this old Millie strip from 1991…

91-8a

But it’s good to get a chance to draw Jones doing something other than one of the six stock poses*. I’m trying to get more variety into how I draw the cats, and maybe, after much experimentation, I shall end up with a seventh…

*Walking, standing, sitting on haunches, sitting fully lowered, running, sleeping.