This is the back of the Observer Building. You can reach it by either driving half a mile from the front door in a circuitous route that takes you from the top of the cliff to the bottom – or you can walk down a set of stone stairs at the side of the building. The graffiti strewn fire-escape bedecked space at the back is known as Gotham Alley, and is often used for street festivals.

 

I’d better explain some of Chumley’s incantations. Open Seame and Abracadabra are obvious enough, but Izzy wizzy let’s get busy is the catchphrase of Sooty, a beloved glove puppet of a bear that has been entertaining children since 1948. I used to watch Sooty avidly on the telly and he gave me my first taste of the stage when I was a child, when I was invited to go up on stage to meet him and Harry Corbett during a live show in Tunbridge Wells.

Alaam kazaar (as I remember it) was the incanation of Fareik the Magician in Hanna Barbera’s Arabian Knights, an animated segment of the Banana Splits show.

Of course, in Britain, the magic words that will get you into any house party is ‘We’re friends of Dave‘ as there’s guaranteed to be a Dave there. A party isn’t a party without a certified Dave present.

The referendum was still a week away. And that particular incanation is more likely to make doors slam in your face than anything else.

Note that Smith has noticed the window in the second frame, and it’s there, open, in plain sight in the penultimate frame. And aren’t the colours lovely? This is one of those strips where everything worked.