Reg Smythe

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Reginald "Reg" Smythe (July 10, 1917, Hartlepool – June 13, 1998, Hartlepool) was a British cartoonist who created the Andy Capp comic strip.

Born Reginald Smyth (without the "e"), the son of Richard Oliver Smyth, a shipyard worker, and his wife, Florence (Florrie) née Pearce, he left school at 14. After some years unemployed he joined the Northumberland Fusiliers, serving ten years and rising to the rank of sergeant.

During World War II, Smyth saw active service in North Africa, where he developed a talent for cartoon drawing through creating posters for amateur dramatic productions.

After being released from active duty, he settled in London and worked as a clerk for the GPO. He continued to draw poster art but in the 1950s moved to cartoon work, operating through an agent and using the pseudonym Reg Smythe.

By the mid-1950s, he was working for the Daily Mirror, where his "Andy Capp" cartoon strip had its debut in 1957. It made its way to the United States in 1963. Smyth described Andy Capp as having been born "on the A1 road at 60 mph" after he had received, during a visit to West Hartlepool, a request from the Mirror Group chairman Hugh Cudlipp to create a cartoon to boost northern readership . The characters Andy and Flo were based on Smyth's own parents.

Apart from its rapid success in the UK, the Andy Capp strip became popular internationally in at least 34 countries and 700 newspapers Andy became Tuffa Viktor in Sweden, Willi Wacker in Germany, André Chapeau in France, and Kasket Karl in Denmark, though he remained "Andy Capp" in the US. Smyth received numerous awards, including Best British cartoon strip every year from 1961-1965; major awards in Italy in 1969, 1973 and 1978; and in the US, the National Cartoonists Society Best Strip award in 1974.

"Andy Capp" was adapted as a West End musical and a 1988 television scripted by Keith Waterhouse, without notable success.

In the mid-1970s, Smythe returned to Hartlepool, where he died of lung cancer in 1998, aged 80.

In 2007, after years of local speculation and fundraising, a bronze statue commemorating Andy Capp was erected near to the Harbour of Refuge Pub in Smyth's home town of Hartlepool. Measuring 5ft 8in, the Statue cost £20,000 and was designed by Shrewsbury sculptor Jane Robbins.^[1]

[edit] References

Keith Gregson, "Smyth, Reginald [Reg Smythe] (1917–1998)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 18 July 2007