Angie Belcher & Roland Moore

Pioneering comedian Angie Belcher and Emmy Award-winning TV writer Roland Moore bring in panels from a 21st century modern kids classic and an enduring British kids comic staple.

See the images from the episode here (they're also in the podcast artwork).

Every episode, the guests reveal a panel from a comic, we try and guess where it's from, then we chat about it. Half an hour later hopefully we've learned something, or just shown off and had fun along the way.

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Your host, and series creator, is Kev F Sutherland, writer and artist for Beano, Marvel, Oink, The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre, and most recently author and artist of graphic novels based on Shakespeare. kevfcomicartist.com

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Transcript

Kev F Sutherland 0:00

Hello. Oh well, don't laugh over my hello.

Angie Belcher 0:04

Sorry.

Kev F Sutherland 0:05

Actually, you can laugh at anything. That just makes for a better show. Well, not there, obviously. That was exactly not there. Hello, and welcome to Comic Cuts, the panel show. I'm Kev F. Sutherland, the bloke who writes and draws comics for Beano and Marvel, and now adapts Shakespeare into graphic novels for kids, and also has a hand in the Scottish Falsetto Soc, Puppet Theatre. And this is your favourite podcast, which has an occasionally remote connection to comics. My guests have brought with them a panel from a comic or something close, and we're going to see if we can identify it and talk about it. Maybe we and you will learn something about comics we didn't already know, or maybe we'll just show off a bit and have an enjoyable chat. Let us see. From the worlds of TV and comedy, my guests today are Roland Moore and Angie Belcher. Hello. Comic Cuts. We're looking at a panel, and we comprise a panel, there's a few of us, so the panel sees a panel and we talk about the comics from the panel we discuss. We call it Comic Cuts. I've asked everyone on the panel to bring a panel to the panel. You can see these images on the show page and on the artwork for the podcast episode, depending wherever you get your podcasts, but don't worry about seeing the images because, of course, we're going to describe them. But first, we're going to describe ourselves. My guests are Roland and Angie. Roland, uh, I know you from having written comedy together many, many years ago, but you're an Emmy award-winning TV writer. I know. It's I'm I'm still in shocked by that. You're an Emmy Award winner for the TV show Fallen. How did this come about?

Roland Moore 1:43

Um Yeah, it was a surprise to me. Um it happened late last year. Um so yeah, I was brought on as sort of um sort of the writer for to do it, to adapt it for TV. And um and then we sort of put it forward for the Emmys and um got nominated, went to the show and won. And it was like yeah, absolute shock. It was yeah, quite a process. I'm still sort of reeling.

Kev F Sutherland 2:11

What's that ceremony like? I mean, obviously we all saw that episode of the studio. Is it exactly like that?

Roland Moore 2:18

Yeah. Well, you know the um that bit I've always noticed on like BAFTAs and things where you have the four tables when they're in quarters of the screen, and you've all got your own cameraman looking at you, waiting for the slightest reaction to the news, you know, as you you're practicing your sort of good, good, sort of natured um sort of congratulations faces, um, because you think, oh, I'm not gonna win. Um, and the last thing you want to become is a meme for sort of swearing under your breath or something like that, you know. Um but yeah, it is just like you see. So you've got the quarter of the screen of the four tables, and then um they announced the winner. Um we were sort of in shock and went sort of staggered to the stage, and it was um yeah, just like you like you imagine, like I imagine too. Did you prepare a speech? Did you fluff it? I was very lucky I didn't have to give a speech because they're they're very strict on timings. So you get you get 30 seconds to um say all your thank yous. And our director, Matt Hastings, he was um he was the nominated speaker. So he did it, and he did a yeah, he did a beautiful speech that was exactly 30 seconds long, I think. And uh yeah, so I s I sort of stood on stage next to him, sort of smiling. That's what I liked, you know. But yeah, I was relieved from that.

Kev F Sutherland 3:36

Before I allow any of my guests to uh cast a shadow over any of the others, uh Angie, you're a bit of an award winner yourself. Not only uh Bristol's second most influential woman, uh that was Bristol Live gave you that, but The Hague gave you an award for world comedian of emancipation. I mean, what?

Angie Belcher 3:57

Yeah, oh right. This was um it's I've never been there or anything. Uh what it is, is my my company Comedy on Referral, which uses the process of learning stand-up comedy for therapeutic benefit, uh, is was awarded this basically in my work uh looking at trauma uh and disability and mental health using stand-up comedy. Actually, I want to say Ronald, do you know when they gave you the award? Was it like at the start of the evening where everyone's all shiny and happy and clappy? Or was it at the end of the evening where everyone like just wants to go home? Because what the reception you get must depend on which bit of the night you're in.

Roland Moore 4:28

Yeah, it yeah, it's quite a long night, I seem to remember. And um and but you only get the award when you go up on stage. And it's a it's a colossal thing. It's huge. Um I've got pictures of me with it, and it's like sort of I've I'm part of a double act, you know, it's it's that big.

Kev F Sutherland 4:43

And we assume an Emmy leads to uh more great things. So the offer's been flowing in since.

Roland Moore 4:49

I think it I think it has perhaps made a difference. Um I yeah, as I say, it was only sort of the end of November, but um I've certainly had sort of some discussions that I've been lucky enough to have that perhaps I wouldn't have done before, you know, um and those sort of things. Um and I think it's about having a plan, sort of util how you know, when you get any sort of award is is how you plan to sort of utilize that. And that's not my strongest point, um, planning. So yeah, we'll see what happens. But you know.

Angie Belcher 5:20

At least you got an award though. Whereas the problem with the Hague one was because um uh they sent it in the post and it was glass and it wasn't wrapped very well, and so it broke. And so now my award is not only an award, it's also an accident waiting to happen with my seven-year-old when he falls over near it.

Kev F Sutherland 5:36

Yeah. Talking of seven-year-olds, uh, Angie, you organized a very or brought into being a very different sort of comedy club because you had a very young child.

Angie Belcher 5:46

Yeah, I've got a daytime comedy club uh called Aftermirth, uh, which is for parents of newborn children up to about a year old. So it's a normal comedy club, but it happens at 11am in the morning. And uh you can bring your baby. So we have a room of 70 babies crying, it's amazing.

Kev F Sutherland 6:02

And not wanting to leave any demographic unentertained, you've also got elder mirth.

Angie Belcher 6:08

Yeah, eldermoth is the same thing, but it happens at 11am in the morning, but it's for older people. And I've done some special stuff as well for uh uh care homes that work with brain injured people. So sometimes you get a brain injury, you're often in a hospital with older people, and so we've done some just for younger people who've got a brain injury who can't well find it harder, I suppose, to get out in the evenings. The whole point of my daytime comedy clubs is that I think that everyone should experience stand-up comedy and not just to be an evening thing or whatever. And I've done it for groups of people with learning difficulties who again kind of can go out in the evening, of course, but sometimes it's a bit scarier when you've got a disability or a learning difficulty to go out in the dark, especially in the winter or on a bus, or you're not too sure how to get there and all that kind of stuff. So it's yeah, it's about the daytime uses of stand-up comedy.

Roland Moore 6:51

And and can you reuse use any gags at all? Oh, yeah, good point.

Angie Belcher 6:55

Yeah, completely. I mean, I like using uh stand-up comedians that are also parents because it's so much more relatable to the audience. But to be honest with you, anyone can come. We've had all sorts of different acts. Uh it doesn't have to be specialized material. It's nice if one or a parent who, you know, one of them is a parent who can talk about kind of birth because these women have just been through, you know, nine months of obesity, three days of unbearable pain, and now they've got like a baby to look after for the next 21 years. And so um that sort of stuff, having a bit relatable stuff is nice, but on the whole, it's just a normal comedy club.

Kev F Sutherland 7:25

And you both teach uh your your subjects. Uh Rowland, you've been uh teaching a university level, you've been teaching writing?

Roland Moore 7:32

Yeah, um, so MA and BA courses, um, some sort of um I'm not a lecturer or anything, just a guest lecturer who goes around. Um so I've gone to places at Oxford Brooks and Westminster and Winchester to Montford. Um, and it's it's basically a two-hour seminar on on writing for TV. Um it sort of encapsulates my journey as to how I did it, um, and sort of the the landscape, because they're all interested in in film or TV. Um, and so it's sort of to try and sort of equip them for when they become professional sort of writers or directors.

Kev F Sutherland 8:09

Has the nature of writing for TV changed a lot since we've gone into a streaming world rather than a broadcast world?

Roland Moore 8:16

Yeah, no, I think definitely the landscape has changed. Um all these streaming services have box sets, but um they vary in length. So, you know, whereas writing for the BBC it has to be that certain amount of le of minutes. For for Netflix, you can have like I've watched things that have episodes that are 30 minutes long, and the next episode might be 58. You know, you've got that flexibility of storytelling, I think. Um but I think the bingeable nature of streaming has has had an effect as well. But I think it's had an effect on all types of writing because people realise, yeah, you've got to keep the audience. There's so much stuff out there. There's you know, you've got to keep their attention and ideally make them sort of complete the series um to the end, you know. So strong cliffhangers, which I think, you know, my love of things like Doctor Who in the old days with his massive cliffhangers, I think that's really helped, you know, but um because we're all after that.

Kev F Sutherland 9:12

Angie, you teach comedy to corporate folks. That's that's people in business, isn't it? Do you do you find many people in business don't have a sense of humor?

Angie Belcher 9:23

Um, I think it's a different kind of audience to my stuff where I work with trauma and mental health and stuff. People are often kind of like a bit like corporate do's really. People are always watching to see, oh, does the boss find this funny? Do they laugh? If they laugh, then can I laugh and all that kind of stuff? Um, but yeah, it's fun and it's about relationship building with all of it, really. So it's about building a relationship with that team and then um helping them. But I often find also, you know, one of the startup things that I do is I kind of get people to stand on like um a barometer of how confident they feel about doing stand-up comedy. And what I know is the people who have kind of put themselves at 10 are always the ones that need a bit of work, shall we say? And the person that puts themselves at zero is always the funniest. Uh so when it comes to bravado and stuff in kind of big like teams of lawyers and corporates and bankers and stuff, it's always the one at the the other end of the scale that I'm like, oh, I can't wait to hear what you've got to come up at with because it's gonna be brilliant.

Kev F Sutherland 10:13

Yeah, goodness. Well, let's see what you guys have come up with because you have brought with you comic strip panels. We're gonna have a look at your comic strip panels. Angie, we're gonna begin with yours. Now, it we can all see this, can't we? Yes. Listener at home, you should be able to see this on the program artwork, and you should see it wherever you get your podcast. And it's also on the website. Follow the link in the show notes. But you don't need to because this is the one that's been chosen by Ange, and Roland is about to describe it. Roland, what are we looking at here?

Roland Moore 10:48

Okay, so it's uh a black and white panel, um a single panel from a cartoon, um, and it's got uh a filing cabinet that's open, and um a small boy is rooting through this filing cabinet that seems to be full of sort of I guess junk. Um and he he he's holding a skateboard, and his friend's sort of pointing out something behind him that's in the cabinet. Um they both he the friend looks a bit alarmed at what he's pointing at. Um actually, I think no, I think the friend is pointing at what's in the other boy's hand, which does I'm hoping is a worn-up whip, but I suspect it's not. I suspect it's it's a poo.

Kev F Sutherland 11:31

Yeah, talking about burying the lead, I would have started with a boy has just fished a poo out of a drawer. That's what I see first.

Angie Belcher 11:38

Um set the scene, you know, through the narrative without kind of just looking at the the main thing that I would have looked at, which is you're right, the the poo, yeah.

Roland Moore 11:48

It's the elephant in the room, isn't it?

Angie Belcher 11:51

The elephant might have done it actually.

Kev F Sutherland 11:53

Um, for the students of line drawing and technique, I can tell you that this is line drawn, probably with pen, probably with felt tip pen, I'm not entirely sure. And it's watercoloured. And I'd like to think the watercolour has been done with pen as well. I don't actually know, although I bet it's something I could find out because I know, and I think um Roland has guessed, this is quite a familiar artist's work we're looking at. And to add to my part of the description, there's two boys, they've just fished a poo out of a filing cabinet. They've both got skateboards in their hands, they're both wearing black backpacks. One boy, we can assume is dark-skinned, one boy is light-skinned with big, curly, fluffy hair. Uh Roland, tell us more and have a guess, if you will, where you think it's from.

Roland Moore 12:38

Oh yeah, it's um yeah, I I recognise the artists, but I couldn't name them. Um it's obviously a comic comic rather than a sort of dramatic one. I want to say it's sort of similar to Charles Schultz. But I don't think uh it's not quite as precise as him.

Kev F Sutherland 12:58

What I'm going to do is I'm going to share now the wider picture from Angie's selection. And can you see that wider page now? It it's a slightly different page, but it says it all. And Roland, what is it? It's Captain Underpants. Yes.

Roland Moore 13:15

I should have known this. I have read this.

Kev F Sutherland 13:20

So, Roland, you was your young'n young enough for Captain Underpants at the right age?

Roland Moore 13:26

He was, yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm not sure when this came out, but we've we certainly got it. And um yeah, and it was devoured along with things like the Wimpy Pearl books and Jamie Smart. Um this isn't Jamie Smart, is it there?

Kev F Sutherland 13:42

No, this is Dave Pilke. I believe it's it's spelt Dav, but I believe it's pronounced Dave. Angie, tell us more about you and Captain Underpants.

Angie Belcher 13:52

Yeah, you're right. It's Dave or Dave Pilke, who apparently he's um he he was supposed to be a Dave, but due to a kind of a spelling mistake when he was little, um he just became Dave. Yeah. So this is Captain Underpants, which is amazing. This is George and Harold, who've gone on these amazing adventures uh whereby they find that they can control their headmaster by doing certain things or they're hearing certain things or clicking their fingers and it comes back. And um, oh, we love it, and we loved it so much that um the Comic-Con uh last year in Bristol where I bumped into care, oh yeah, well done can have a good timing. Um, we dressed up for me and my seven-year-old boy as demands, and that's us in old in Bristol. We're getting a lot of stares, and you know what? I loved it, it was amazing. Um, I've never worn men's underpants before, but there's a first time for everything in these ways. And um, we had a fun, this is our first Comic-Con as well. And so that's us wearing our underpants on the outside. And and the reason, I do want me to tell you why I love it. I love the reason why I love capturing underpants is I just think it's that kind of bit of magic whereby everyone at some point must have been told off by a teacher or a head teacher, and it's that magical thing about being able to control them. And I also love how uh it's a bit meta as well. I've got into the comedy. There we go, I know, but it's a bit meta as well because they draw the comics within the comics and they always in the middle bit have an old-fashioned um what's that thing where do you kind of go at that with a page and it kind of becomes like a film? Flipbook, thank you. Cheers, go. Um, so and stupidly, I know I don't know, I don't remember my just a big big kid at heart, but I love doing the flippy bit in the middle and the idea that they always so Dav's drawing this, but uh George and Harold are a kind of part of the writing as well. So I think it's really good also for encouraging kids to write comic books. And my boy loves making his own comic books, and I think Dave Pilkey's uh books have really helped him to kind of get some inspiration for that and do his own creations.

Kev F Sutherland 15:50

Yeah, this has been the revelation for me in the work that I do with kids. Partly I do my comic art masterclass for kids, but also I write and draw my Shakespeare books for kids. And it is Dave Pilke, single-handedly, who has opened up a totally new market because Dogman is all comic book. Captain Underpants is text and pictures with some comic book in. And because of the success of the comic book elements of that, the publishers agreed to let him do an entire comic book book, so comic book from cover to cover. And of course, it's much more popular than the ones which are a mixture of text and pictures. So suddenly the dog man shelf in Waterston's, in Barnes and Noble, in bookshops around the world has opened up. Um uh Jamie Smart's Bunny versus Monkey, which you've just uh mentioned, Roland, has joined on that shelf along with the other things from the Phoenix comic. And suddenly there's a publishing world that previously the book trade used to say no to. Oh, that's great.

Angie Belcher 16:48

Exactly. I think it's gone both ways, hasn't it?

Roland Moore 16:50

I've certainly noticed myself, those shelves, um, all those artists, and I think the Phoenix, yeah, has played a major part in this. Um we devoured that at the right age, you know, and just um just the fact that there's something different on every page. The style of art is different in every strip, and it all meshes alongside one another. It's yeah, what a fabulous showcase.

Angie Belcher 17:12

Yeah, they're massive, those bits with DAF, but they still can't compete with Julia Donaldson, though. She always has the biggest displaying water stones, there in it. So hers is massive. Everyone's got something to aspire to, I think, when they see Julia, if you're a children's author, to get your your design a bit bigger than hers.

Kev F Sutherland 17:29

At time of recording, there is a new shelf opening up in Waterstones, uh, because a lot of the David Walliams books may not be taking on as much room as they did before. They'll be shunting along into the Neil Gaiman space. It's like a half a shop has opened up.

Angie Belcher 17:44

Yeah, I think Kev, even the charity shops won't have the Walliams books either anymore. If you look at Roald Dahl's books, some of the writing in like George's Marvellous Medicine, I mean, look at some of the language that he uses at the start of that book as well, is really kind of like elder shame, I suppose, and saying horrible things about Granny's. So it's kind of happened all before, isn't it?

Kev F Sutherland 18:02

So um obviously I'm not comparing um Dahl and Wattles at all, but Heaven for Fend, we should hold anybody to the standards of appalling anti-Semite role Dahl.

Angie Belcher 18:11

Exactly, yes.

Kev F Sutherland 18:12

A lot has changed over the years. Sensitivity reading happens. Uh Roland, has that had to be um integrated into your work for TV or for publishing?

Roland Moore 18:22

Um yes, yeah, absolutely. Um so anytime like in in publishing, so I've written some historical novels, um, and anything that approaches a sex scene will be passed through a sensitivity reader. And so it's it yeah, it's a great thing because we can write now with confidence that yeah, this isn't gonna sort of either offend people or upset them in any way or sort of trigger anybody who's had sort of any issues around this.

Kev F Sutherland 18:49

Um and Anj, have you found that comedy has has changed as far as um sensitivity to the audience is concerned?

Angie Belcher 18:57

Yeah, I think MCs, especially now, have gone in for that whole thing about get to know your heckler and love your audience. And if you come from that kind of angle, people have a much nicer experience. It's the reason why for ages, you know, girls didn't go to stunt comedy in the evening so much. And it was like, why are they all male audiences? It's because you're worried that someone's going to pick on something to do with your physical appearance or call you a nasty kind of misogynistic name. And I I notice now uh that myself and other MCs tend to go in for the let's have fun together, let's be nice to each other. It doesn't mean that you can't still be horrible to a comedian, but it's coming from it's setting up the room to be, hey, let's have a good time rather than let's take everyone down in the front row.

Roland Moore 19:34

Yeah, from my point of view, I've noticed that as well. Because I I went to a comedy gig in Edinburgh years ago, and Ricky Gervais was doing a character there, and he was walking around the audience, and I thought, oh no, you know, this this sort of stuff makes me really tense. I don't I don't want to be part of the show. I'm very happy to laugh at it and be supportive, but I don't want to be part of it. Um and he got me to read out a letter, this long letter, that then had a comic punch. That he'd deliver. And it was yeah, I always remember that as um it was my worst gig.

Kev F Sutherland 20:07

And you and I were doing comedy for the stage when we first worked together with the show The Sitcom Trials. Um I remember the thing that uh you wrote, which of course was called Can We Get Les Dennis?

Angie Belcher 20:20

I remember that as well.

Roland Moore 20:21

Which dates it rather, I guess. But um Yes, it was about a monstrous TV producer who um that was sort of one of the questions you'd asked is can we get Les Dennis? Um But yeah, working with comedy, um it it was a real sort of um not an arena, but it it it was it it was sort of um very visceral in terms of yeah, you get an instant response to what you'd written. Um and we were writing sitcoms. Um you instantly knew what worked, what didn't, what an audience wanted. Um so it's like brutal feedback really quickly. Um but yeah, absolutely exhilarating to me.

Angie Belcher 20:58

I remember doing that one in London with Wanda actually. Do you remember one of our London shows where we went off? And I can remember being with Wanda on stage with her doing that. And I can remember some of the language that that was in that then, it was quite a while ago, wasn't it? You probably wouldn't put in now, because I can remember some of the ones made us go, woohoo, even then. Uh but it's a great script. I remember it well.

Roland Moore 21:16

Yeah. And I think it's also the challenge of doing it for a live audience, whereas, yeah, on TV or radio you'd have different um different sort of criteria for writing it and um different sort of perhaps embargoes on what you could or couldn't do, you know.

Kev F Sutherland 21:32

Well, that's one one big thing that's been lost in the in the new TV landscape is the studio audience comedy. Because um this the show that we're talking about, listener, is called the sitcom trials, where we would test situation comedy scripts in front of a live audience, which is how you would then go on to do them on the radio, and you'd then, at that time, 25 years ago, uh have gone to do it on the tell. But now, a studio audience comedy, that's just not how one does it. So uh you don't get that same quite that same nature of a laugh every 10 seconds comedy, do you?

Roland Moore 22:05

I th I think the problem also is that um sitcoms are so risky to do for TV commissioners. Um it's it so much comedy um comes down to sort of personal taste and uh and sort of what you feel of it. Um and certainly something I've noticed writing comedy is that going through the script editing process is really hard because you make a script editor laugh, the next time they come to that script, they're not gonna perhaps laugh at that joke in the same way because they know it and you've lost the sort of bit of surprise. Um and so with comedy you can tend to overwork it. Um this is my experience from a writing point of view, but obviously Andrew will know from a performance point of view.

Angie Belcher 22:47

Yeah, and also when I show um today's students who are like tend to be 18, 19, 20 in the um universities that I teach at and the drama schools, when I show them old um sketch shows now where they've got a really big laugh trap, they're like, What's that? You know what I mean? It's so jarring. And this isn't live, this has kind of obviously been put on to inform people where to laugh in case you didn't know where the punchline was. They find it really weird and really artificial because we've kind of gone down the thing now of like not always using that laugh track, sometimes it's still used, but it's more we rely on the audience now to kind of go to experience it themselves without having that laugh track to kind of get you in the mood, as it were.

Roland Moore 23:22

And do you think that the laugh track came about because of you wanting to watch comedy in a crowd? And so, and obviously when you're at at home on your own or watching TV, you you haven't got that.

Angie Belcher 23:32

That's right, comedy is social glue, which is why if you ever watch a sitcom on your own and you laugh, it means it's really funny because you've got no one. It's that contagion thing, isn't it? So yeah, like I I just was watching something called Extraordinary, which I've never seen before. Oh, it's amazing if you haven't seen it, happy and I was laughing on my own watching it. I was like, this is good, because yeah, laughing's to do with the social glue of a like you say, a a dynamic of a community together.

Kev F Sutherland 23:57

I mean, comedy with a laugh track came about because you know you'd automatically have an audience with you in the theatre, so it would have been weird not to have it. And for about 50 or 60 years, we kept on that tradition. We're sort of pointing cameras at the theatre set, um, and right the way through the faulty towers years and right the way through the one foot in the grave years, you're really still filming a theatre production. And situation comedy also always thrived by being kept small, usually in one set.

Angie Belcher 24:24

Yeah, I think if you look at um sitcoms now like uh Two Doors Down, is it, and Mum, which is brilliant. Every watch Mum, it's amazing. It's more about the subtleties of the comedy and the humour, with the kind of like big dramatic kind of like, oh, actually it's really emotional as well. And we can I think we trust the audience now to have their own um uh understanding and journey through the sitcom. Yeah.

Kev F Sutherland 24:45

I wonder if it's the environment in which people are watching it as well, because sitting round the room, round the telly with the whole family, which is what we imagine happened in the 1970s, a lot of people might be watching these things on their phone, through their headphones. And so an audience around them is just spooky.

Roland Moore 25:02

Yeah, it's it's amazing how it's changed. And um, I mean, I'd love them to commission more sitcoms for TV. Um, and I think there will be various initiatives that come around, I think. But um because they sometimes do things where they commission like a single episode of a few different shows, don't they? And um, yeah, more of that sort of thing.

Kev F Sutherland 25:22

Well, talking of more of that sort of thing, let's have more of the bringing in comic strip panels and looking at those. Roland has brought in this. We're gonna begin, Ange, with you describing what you see. It's interestingly cropped. Uh, Roland has photographed this at a rakish angle, not the angle at which it was drawn, just the angle at which it came out on your phone. Uh, listener at home, you'll be able to find this probably angle corrected on the holding page. But Anj, do describe for us what you think you're looking at.

Angie Belcher 25:56

Right. Well, I can cock my head to one side and tell you that this is the there's an individual here who's human but has a purple face. I wonder whether he's a professor or she or they. Um, do I read out the the dialogue as well? Do I? Not yourself, then so he says they're fools making movies, don't they? No real money's in comics. And then I think he just gives the punchline to his own setup there, which is we've raked in tens of pounds doing this, which is nice. Lovely. So um I have got no idea what this is, Kev. I mean, it looks like kind of again like a children's one.

Kev F Sutherland 26:32

You have summed up exactly what we're looking at. We are looking at a purple-faced, round-faced, round-nosed, square-eyed, smiling cartoon character drawn in bold outline. Um, I was gonna suggest it had possibly been drawn in felt-tip pen, but I have a feeling it might have been drawn on screen. Uh, and I know what it's from. We're going to pull back and have a look at the whole or a bit more of the page that it's from. Um Angie, this way reveal it to you. Oh, what do you see?

Angie Belcher 27:05

Oh my god, I should have known that.

Kev F Sutherland 27:07

The numbskulls now appear in the beano, and this is from uh fresh, recent Bino. This is uh written and drawn by Nigel Octoloony. In fact, we can see his name there in the middle of the picture in this whole wide page.

Angie Belcher 27:21

Great name.

Kev F Sutherland 27:21

And Nigel Octoloony is the guy who, for the rest of the beano, mostly write.

Angie Belcher 27:26

Is that his real name, Ted?

Kev F Sutherland 27:27

Nigel Octoloony is his name.

Angie Belcher 27:29

That's an amazing name, and he's a cartoonist.

Kev F Sutherland 27:31

Brilliant. He is a friend of the podcast. Uh, listener, you'll be able to find Nigel, who appeared on the podcast alongside uh Laura Howell, the artist on Minnie the Minx in The Beano. And yeah, Nigel writes Minnie occasionally, he writes Dennis the Menace occasionally. He is a really original comedy writer. When he does his own cartooning uh with his um online material under the name Splenel, he does some very savage satirical stuff for grown-ups, very much for grown-ups, and then suddenly he's doing the best writing and some of the best drawing in the Beano itself. Roland, what made you choose this?

Roland Moore 28:08

Um yeah, so this is from 2015. Um, and I was reading the numbskulls and the beano at the time. Um and the film Inside Out had just come out, and there was sort of a sort of rumblings online about oh, it's it's very similar to the numbskulls, you know, is it is numb numbskulls credited and all this sort of thing? Um and then the Bino actually went and did this comic strip that sort of confronted the issue. Um and they've gone on record saying, yeah, there's no similarity really between the two because in the numbskulls there are a bunch of engineers who sort of control this guy's body. Um and in inside out there are obviously emotions, you know. Um so they had no problem with sort of the diff the similarities and differences. Um but they did do this one single strip that confronted it head on. Um and the reason I chose it was because I don't think I'm not sure how often the beano gets meta, you know, and and this was obviously very meta in especially the panel that I chose originally, you know, um, which I think is a great gag anyway.

Kev F Sutherland 29:15

It's a fantastic choice. And the numbskulls are one of those high-concept things that comics really excels in. The numbskulls began in the 1960s in The Beezer. Was it the Beezer or was it the Topper? It was in one of the tabloid uh DeeCon Thompson comics. At the same time as it started in the 1960s, there was a very similar strip. I don't know if you've ever seen it, called The Nerves. And the Nerves began in wham comic, and it was written originally, I think, by uh Leo Baxendale, but it was drawn by Ken Reed. Ken Reed is the grotesque artist who also drew Face in Boster, and he drew uh Jonah, the guy who sinks ships in the Bino, and he drew the Queen of the Seas, and he drew Oh, a Frankie Stein. A Frankie Stein in in Wham Comic Originally. He's got a grotesque style. Once you've seen it, never forgotten. The nerves didn't last for very long, and but it seems to have started almost simultaneously with the nom scrolls. So I don't know what was happening in the Zeitgeist of the 1960s, people wondering what was going on inside their bodies, but they created imaginary characters that were doing the hidden work.

Angie Belcher 30:21

It just triggered a hidden memory for me, Kev, which is every Saturday. My mum used to buy me Buster and FaceAche. That was like, oh, I know that. Um which is interesting because like these days I would say that I am a comic book reader, and yeah, I was avid as a child. Um, the only reason I read so many now is because of having a seven-year-old myself, but I used to love reading Buster.

Kev F Sutherland 30:40

Well, of course, the case with comics like this, uh, when the non-skulls were around in the Beezer and the Beezer was on the shelf alongside the Topper and the Beano and the Dandy, and half a dozen DC Thompson funny comics, half a dozen DC Thompson girls comics, and then all the comics from the other publishers like Whizer and Chips and Core and Buster, etc., um, it's because there was nothing else. If you wanted colourful, uh funny entertainment, you had about 15 minutes of kids' TV and then the comics.

Roland Moore 31:08

Yeah, well, I remember getting the Beaner as a kid, and it was a big event. I think it's every Wednesday. Um, so I'd sit down with a pack of crisps and a lemonade, and it would be a ritual, and it would take, yeah, perhaps an hour to read it. And yeah, something you'd look forward to because like you say, that the sort of window was limited, you know.

Angie Belcher 31:26

I look like every time I sort out my um uh my my chest of drawers over there, I always come to my comics bit and I always reread Captain Cleavedon, uh which uh Kev wrote. Do you remember Captain Cleveland? It was amazing. I loved it so much.

Roland Moore 31:39

It's um and I think the Beano is a great access point for that because they're sim they look simple drawings. I mean they're I've I know from experience they're hard to do. I I've tried to do Brainy, which I think is the one with the glasses there. Um and it's hard, you know, because it looks really simple, but it's the proportions and things that um that you have to practice, I think.

Kev F Sutherland 32:00

But this is another thing that kids really respond to: the simple drawings. Captain Underpants and Dogman are a very good example. They give the how to draw at the back of the book, and kids love the magic of suddenly making these things appear. So if the line drawings are simple or simplish, or they look like they're simple, you feel like you can start. Whereas um with things that are more over-elaborate, over-coloured, or certainly things that are moving on the screen in front of you, you can't capture that. But a line drawing, yeah, you can do it.

Roland Moore 32:30

That's certainly something I did as well, you know. And um, I sort of progress from that to Marvel trying to draw Spider-Man and um which, yeah, as you say, a lot harder.

Kev F Sutherland 32:40

There was a very good example of that with someone who uh very recently died, Scott Adams, who was the creator of Dilbert. Uh, he went slightly politically off the rails in more recent years, but at his height, Dilbert was a fantastically popular and very successful, uh brilliant cartoon. And Scott Adams had started in IT. He was just a guy working in an office, and then he did these jokes parodying the people in the office, and he would pin them up to the notice board back in the olden days, and people would laugh at the great gags, and they'd say, Oh, these are great gags, Scott. It's a shame you can't draw. Because he would just draw these little pepper pot shapes and then put eyes and nose, but they were drawings done by someone who demonstrably couldn't draw, but that wasn't the point. He could write the funny gags, so he ended up having to keep these people that were mostly sat behind a table, and he just drew something which was the shape of uh well, it's like a dialek with eyes, nose, and mouth. But that was enough.

Roland Moore 33:33

I think the the power of simplicity sometimes is so good. It's like um recently um looking in private eye, we have um the I can't remember the artist, but he does that's that's business, I think.

Kev F Sutherland 33:47

I think that is the writer and artists from modern toss. Yes, that's the desperate business column in private eye. They also do cartoons that appear in The Guardian, and they do a lot which appears online now. And yes, their drawings were scribbles because they uh professed to not be able to draw. And sometimes with cartooning, that's your point. Get your joke across is the job, uh, not show off how well you can draw.

Angie Belcher 34:14

That's an interesting concept you could apply to stand up as well, isn't it? It's sort of you get your point across. And um, as long as you're kind of believing in the authenticity of something that happened or didn't happen, if it's uh not quite the truth, but we never let the truth get in the way of a good punchline. Um, that's a great way to kind of look at standard as well. I love kind of how they it cross-pollinates. Um and the other thing that we're often talking about in stand-up is the ability to fail. I'm always saying to people, you won't get better until you fail. But how many adults do you know who kind of say what you just said, it was just like, oh, I can't draw, or it can't do this, or I can't do that. It's about kind of giving it a go and just trying to immerse yourself in the art form and enjoy it.

Kev F Sutherland 34:47

That said, let us trumpet our successes.

Roland Moore 34:50

Uh Roland, your Emmy Award-winning show is called It's called Fallen and it's a supernatural drama. Um, eight episodes. Um yeah, it's quite dark. It's adapted from a best-selling book called Fallen, um, which was originally a YA novel. Do you know where we can see it in the UK? Um, it will be on this year. I don't know quite where, but um so yeah, it will be. It's it's been shown all various places around the world, um, Canada, US, and um a lot of Europe. But yeah, at the moment you have to go on holiday to see it. And what do we have to look forward from you next? Um I'm working on something very different at the moment. Uh period crime series, which um sets in the UK, which would be a lot of fun. Um has meant a lot of research, which has been good fun. Um because um yeah, you want to get these things right. Um because anything that takes people out of the world of of it is wrong. So setting it in the 1920s, no iPods, no iPads, no phones. Um yeah, gotta remember these things.

Kev F Sutherland 35:53

Yes, it'd be really bad to accidentally have someone whip out their phone and check their smartwatch.

Roland Moore 35:59

I think we get talks about the viewing figures, but for for all the wrong reasons.

Kev F Sutherland 36:04

And Angie, what can we look out for from you next week?

Angie Belcher 36:08

An exciting animation and stand-up comedy project, actually, which I'm really, really like can't wait to get some funding for. It's called RXLol, and it's the process of using trauma in hospitals and getting people to do their stand-up comedy, and it also involves a very exciting animation element, which is going to be brilliant. Uh so I'm currently when I got some money to do that, I'm hopefully I'll be doing some work on it. Uh, but until then, have a look at comedyonrefer all.com where you can learn about all my work using trauma in stand-up comedy.

Kev F Sutherland 36:36

Oh, well, we've found out where to find you. Roland, where do we find you on the socials?

Roland Moore 36:39

Um yeah, I'm on Blue Sky, um Roland Moore TV. Um, maybe.tv, maybe there. Um, but yeah, look, search me, I'm on there. Um got a website, Rolandmoore.tv as well.

Kev F Sutherland 36:50

Magnificent. We have been looking at Captain Underpants by Dave Pilke, or maybe Dav Pilke, and we've been looking at the Numskulls from the Bino by Nigel Ochtelooney. My two guests have been Roland Moore and Angie Belcher. Thank you very much.

Angie Belcher 37:05

Thanks for having me.

Kev F Sutherland 37:17

Hey, if you're enjoying this episode of Comic Cuts the Panel show, don't forget there's an entire back catalogue in a first season for you to catch up on. My guests have included comic folk like Brian Bolland, Rachel Smith, Metafrog, Gary Northfield, Nigel Octaloony, Nigel Parkinson, Laura Howell, Sonia Long, David Leach. We've had the comics, laureate Hannah Berry, resident alien creator Peter Hogan, podcasters like Adam Roach, legendary singer-songwriter Dean Friedman, Jessica Martin. The list of comedians includes Ashley Story, Bethany Black, Will Hodgson, Paul Karenz, Izzy Lawrence, Doug Seagull. There is too many to list. And they've brought in comics from Marvel and DC to The Bunty and The Eagle, from Robert Crumb to Viz, Webcomics, Obscure Manga, all points in between. And sometimes we don't talk about comics at all. Don't forget to click and subscribe, leave a review, and tell a friend. For example, what could these two be talking about?

Angie Belcher 38:05

With a swastika on his shirt, uh, he's got his trousers down and his bum out, and he's he's standing with his feet in a bucket of pig shits on a stage. Um, there's lots of people looking behind him, and he's saying, uh uh uh, ah yes, I can feel it coming out now. Go on, fuck off out of it, you blasted queen.

Kev F Sutherland 38:22

Comic cuts. We're looking at a panel, and we comprise a panel, there's a few of us. So the panel sees a panel and we talk about the comics from the panel we discuss. We call it Comic Cuts.