The Satirical Panther

This is based on a series of posts that originally appeared on my Patreon. If you like the look of it and would like to join up and get access to tons of other regularly updated thoughts on various off-kilter aspects of popular culture – including recently on early ITV children’s comedy show Kept In, the Casio Pocket TY at a letter to TV Times about Bernard Levin’s chair – you can find it here.

Between 1951 and 1984, Polystyle Publications’ TV Comic served up a weekly diet of comic strips based on television’s most popular and indeed most licensable children’s shows, set in a sort of bizarre shared universe that would infamously see their banner characters regularly teaming up on the cover, more often than not in some sort of worryingly bulging and teetering seaside scenario. Actually predating ITV by some considerable length of time, TV Comic initially concentrated on the likes of Muffin The Mule, Mr. Pastry, that Cowboy Hank character and company before swelling their ranks with the likes of Steed and Emma, Steve Zodiac and Captain Larry Dart alongside BBC-sourced newcomers like Adam Adamant and The Telegoons and the glamorous transatlantic likes of Tom And Jerry and Ron Ely-era Tarzan, not to mention original strips like Nelle And Her Telly, Lochy The Loch Ness Monster and Dad, which was sadly not a before the event adaptation of the late nineties George Cole sitcom.

Despite the rapidly changing nature of television itself, TV Comic effortlessly cruised through the seventies, bringing in new names like Rod Hull And Emu, Roobarb, Charlie’s Angels and – oddly – lumbering detective Frank Cannon, and even more oddly still British Telecom’s Cribbins-voiced telegraph wire-botherer Buzby. By the eighties, however, they were struggling. Despite high-profile up-to-the-minute new signings including Battle Of The Planets, Tales Of The Gold Monkey and The A-Team, TV Comic was beginning to feel a little old-fashioned and what they very clearly needed as a bold reader-attracting front page gambit was topical satire. No, really. In the age of Thatcher and Reagan, what better way to pull in the juvenile punters than with a quick gag about Prince Charles being answered back to by a talking calculator?

The big question, however, was which long-serving and highly recognisable character to use to frame these savage up to the minute satirical barbs. The cartoon-incarnation ‘Stan’ and ‘Ollie’ who could at least have accidentally whacked Mr. Andropov with a plank? Basil Brush and his comics-only butler ‘Chummers’ to cause uproar in Thatcherite society? No, they went instead for the famously taciturn and topically feckless The Pink Panther, whose primary stance on sociological issues never appeared to accommodate very much more than the optimal position for his deckchair regardless of the societal and practical headaches it may cause.

Take, for example, this example from early 1982, where if the lure of Clark Brandon-starring one-series wonder import about a teenage boy who befriends King Arthur’s court magician now working at a gas station or something Mr. Merlin – which you can find more about here incidentally – and Ken Dodd and The Diddymen sticking it to those advertising industry fatcats wasn’t enough, there was also a timely dig at Rupert Murdoch’s recent acquisition of The Times by virtue of a Newsies-adjacent Pink Panther declaring that The World! Will! Know! that he wasn’t planning to similarly absorb TV Comic, with the lack of buyout serving as no big deal because – wait for it – their readers buy it already. As we shall see, this was to prove a somewhat hubristic gag indeed.

Late in 1984, Prince Charles and Princess Diana went into whatever the global media-courting equivalent of ‘seclusion’ is at Highgrove, ostensibly to avert the relentless intrusion from Fleet Street’s finest shutter-snappers though possibly in actuality to avoid irate fans of The Tripods after a key scene was interrupted by a scroller caption announcing the birth of Prince Harry. Although the key attraction of the issue was ‘Star Line’ on Harrison Ford, TV Comic chose to send this up in fine satirical style with the blissfully unaware couple canoodling beneath a tree crowded out Ludwig-style with old-skool press photographers in full Peter Cook in One Foot In The Algarve regalia, and The Pink Panther doing his best elongated-leg stroll across the grounds in plain view and with a ‘PRESS’ sign stuck in his hatband just in case there was the slightest opportunity that he might actually get away with his subterfuge undetected. How this tallies with Rupert Murdoch apparently ‘not buying’ TV Comic, however, was never satisfactorily explained. As for poor old Charles and Di, if only they could have seen what was ahead. No third series of The Tripods, that’s what.

Between 4th and 10th June 1984, Ronald Reagan – the fortieth president of the United States Of America – made a state visit to the United Kingdom. During this time he held an economic summit with Margaret Thatcher, chaired a meeting of economically aligned Heads of State including – crucially – the Federal Republic Of Germany and dined with the Royal Family, and somehow managed to do all of this without once complaining that he was the most unfairly treated president of all time, folks, that’s just how it is, and the mean Janey Godley held a very mean sign that was mean – mean woman! Sadly, however, his thoughts on the inaugural series of Spitting Image remain unrecorded. Not to mention The Tripods.

TV Comic were not going to take this outrageous display of courteous statesmanship lying down, and promptly dressed up The Pink Panther as some sort of cunningly topical cross between a Buckingham Palace footman and one of those Four Score And A Hundred Years Ago blokes, obediently standing to attention with a mildly ‘sheesh’-tinged expression as Ronnie demanded that most uncouth and disrespectful of American dishes, ‘Big Mac with French Fries’ washed down with a generous serving of Root Beer. In fairness McDonald’s – promoted around this time by Ronald McDonald playing a grand piano full of puppet hamburgers proclaiming him to be ‘the bun clown’ – was at that point still regarded with a great deal of suspicion as some variety of dumbing down-hastening unwanted American interloper, though at least the idea of of an American president proudly and exclusively slobbering down fast food was an actual hilarious comic exaggeration back then. At least Obama would have got chilli and limegrass soup from Eat.

For all her faults – and let’s face it, they’re pretty much all faults, and there’s probably even fault to be found within that – Margaret Thatcher was an unashamed and outspoken supporter of European unity and the Common Market, and a vocal proponent of the proposed single currency. She was also, however, an unashamed and outspoken opponent of the concept of a centralised federated European parliament, and the inherent conflict between these two inherently contradictory stances were simply waved away on the basis of because she said so. That, basically, is how we got from there to that Finger Fright-faced shoe-wiping-voiced racist pedal bin taking part in The Jungle Jimbaroo Challenge Trial or whatever it is while Ant and Dec acted as if everything was just fine and dandy.

But enough about politics – what about politics? Well, TV Comic‘s reaction to one particular outbreak of pre-European Parliament Election brinksmanship in mid-1984 was to pack off The Pink Panther cunningly disguised as a city gent to intercept the Common Market funding that Thatcher had threatened to withdraw at the same time as offering it, hopefully causing her to start spinning round in confusion, which he hoiked back to the UK in an organised crime-style briefcase for the express purpose of his own purposes. Which we can only assume involved a thought bubble with a dollar sign and a cash register noise, and a vague notion of eating at a fancy restaurant where the foot-high maître d took against him for putting on a napkin or something. We can only hope Maggie was sufficiently consoled by that week’s hot William Shatner paperwork-based action in TJ Hooker.

Dominated by James L. Brooks’ dysfunctional family-skewed comedy-melodrama Terms Of Endearment and Ingmar Bergman’s historical bombast Fanny And Alexander, the 56th Annual Academy Awards also found room to dish out the honours to Flashdance, The Right Stuff and Yentl, although sadly there were no ‘gongs’ on the table for Porky’s II: The Next Day or Xtro. Johnny Carson hosted the event for the fifth time, and in a somewhat jarring moment, the mid-show entertainment was provided by Herb Alpert and Lani Hall with a somewhat idiosyncratic Michael Sembello-less reading of Maniac.

Over at TV Comic, however, the ‘1984 Oscar Awards’ were presented by Omar Sharif auditioning for Toast Of London while on his way to also audition for the role of The Swordsman in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and what appears to be that woman off A Handful Of Songs with a diamond tooth. Perhaps realising that not even they could get away with a joke about The Pink Panther sidling off with all of the awards in a half-open bag ostensibly ‘for’ Curse Of The Pink Panther without causing an international incident, they instead sent his animated opening titles cinemagoing compatriot The Inspector. Presumably having been handed an errand by The Commissioner just as he was setting off, The Inspector proceeds to read out a frankly bewildering shopping list, which Omar bemoans with alacrity while apparently locked into his congratulatory position and expression and powerless to prevent that year’s award for Best Picture from going to Some Milk. Well, he certainly did have a problem, and nobody else could help, so if he knew where to find them, maybe he could have hired… The A-Team?

The 1984 Summer Olympics took place in Los Angeles between July 12th and August 28th, and were dominated by the record-breaking medal-winning exploits of Daley Thompson, Sebastian Coe and Carl Lewis, the notorious on-track altercation between Mary Decker and Zola Budd, a boycott by almost the entire Soviet Bloc and Krusty The Klown personally spitting in every fiftieth burger. McDonald’s ran a promotion headed ‘When The US Wins, You Win’, the associated tourism boost was used to fund one hundred top hats for LA’s most deprived areas, and overall it represented both the best and the worst of the Reagan era at exactly the same time throughout. Small wonder, then, that the UK’s leading satirical organ should have had the games firmly within their sites.

Evidently aiming to bypass any such contentious running shoe/leg mid-race interfaces, The Pink Panther was seen here on his marks and getting set by launching himself into the 100 Metres from a giant catapult, apparently chosen over and above any more potentially canonical method such as casually repainting the lane markers to the chagrin of The Man With The Triangle Nose. Whether he also elected to personally spit in every fiftieth Pink Panther Bar is sadly unclear. It’s also worth noting that this issue also included a ‘Starline’ on ‘Champions’, which we can only assume was a profile of William Gaunt to coincide with the repeats of The Champions which were then floating around the ITV regions.

In 1982, Steven Spielberg’s heart-wrenching tale of a rubbery-necked alien who wanted to phone home at the same time as promising to be ‘right here’ E.T. The Extra Terrestrial broke box office records and set audiences blubbing as he kissed Drew Barrymore, inspired a generation of children to try ‘flying’ on their bikes by performing a partial wheelie whilst standing entirely still, and left video shop-dwelling miscreants leaving literally empty-handed when they realised they’d got it out instead of E.T.N The Extra-Terrestrial Nastie by mistake. It was also the year when TV Comic attempted to contrive a one-sided rivalry between E.T. and the obvious side-shunted candidate for being swindled out of space-adulation honours, The Pink Panther.

Now showing at the ‘Regal’ cinema – presumably one that had somehow survived after the chain went into receivership in the early seventies – and not his usual haunt in the company of The Inspector and that boy driving Francoise Hardy’s car Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, E.T. The Extra Terrestrial seems to have provoked a disproportionate degree of disconcertion with The Pink Panther, with his primary objection over the accompanying hype and media saturation being that he’s ‘not even pink’. Even aside from the fact that more humanlike skin tones would have made it easier for the massive-eyed red pointy finger character to avert the attentions of those blokes in hazmat suits who ran a string through Elliot’s house connected to a record player or something, it also suggests the existence of a strata of success where the mere involvement of the word ‘pink’ can automatically confer global and indeed intergalactic popularity. 1982 was, of course, also the year of Trail Of The Pink Panther. Elsewhere in less rueful areas of the issue, you could also find a ‘Star Line’ with ‘James Bond’ – presumably a fudge to skirt around any potential Never Say Never Again-occasioned confusion – and that all important ‘Four Extra Plus Pages’. Doubtless covering the Yahoo Serious Festival.

One evening early in 1984, unsuspecting ITV viewers were suddenly bombarded with the sight of Daniel Peacock, ‘Big Ron’ Tarr and a mysterious unidentified Elvis-y third bloke leaping around past tubs of grouting in lab coats and brothel creepers asking how Do It All do it and what they do it for to the accompaniment of a rasping ‘anything could happen’ rockabilly sax shoutalong, plaintively adding ‘won’t somebody tell?’. The answer to their question in all honesty could not have been more obvious – WH Smith Do It All was a brand new chain of DIY superstores, how they did it was by selling DIY equipment, and what they did it for was the purposes of making a profit whilst providing equipment to purchasers with a predisposition towards fitting rawl plugs. If only they knew it, how Do It All do it, they concluded, they’d be doing it as well. And yet somehow they didn’t.

Do It All weren’t alone either – Woolworths, BHS and John Menzies would also establish their own rival yourself-doing skewed literal one-stop shop outlets, and that is not even getting started on dedicated competitors like Homebase, Texas and that one with a sort of He-Man figure doing a lightning bolt on the logo. Small wonder, then, that TV Comic‘s cover star The Pink Panther should consider this fairly humdrum phenomenon an ideal target for his unusual strand of sending up. The ruthless satirical observation here is that he quite obviously intends to paint the entire interior of his house pink, and to this end he has purchased three separate tins of identical pink paint along with two superfluous money-wasting pails of blue and purple, and has also gone to the trouble of labelling his various surface areas with hilarious painting by numbers coding to indicate which pink gloss should be used where in a sort of sophisticated satire too acute even for a passing cat to ‘get’. However the joke is on him, as it involves greater expenditure and effort on his part than would have been required if he just hadn’t bothered trying to satirise the writer of TV’s Jackson Pace – The Great Years. Elsewhere, the cover handily advises ‘Follow The A-Team Inside!’. A lead that doubtless proved invaluable to Colonel Decker.

Christmas. A time when satirists traditionally set aside their razor-sharp topical barbs and declare a festive armistice. Well, apart from The Saturday Night Armistice Party Bucket. Radio 2 may have occasionally trotted out Christmas Eve pantos with John Cleese as the genie saying “you have wishes three – unlike Jim Callaghan for some reason”, Have I Got News For You might have tried to maintain the illusion that jokes about crates of Schweppes were a valid substitute for withering observations about the Hard ECU and David Frost may have presented endless specials all called things like Frost Had Fallen Frost On Frost Frost On Frost, but it never quite proved to be what the reindeer antler-sporting audience were looking for so it was wall to wall repeats of Christmas With Dad all the way. Which itself had its original broadcast pulled for topical reasons, but that’s another story.

On first glance, you could be forgiven for assuming that TV Comic‘s resident satire-dealing cover-starring thinker of all the animals you’d ever heard about had also chosen to observe this yuletide downing of lampooning tools. After all, he had his strip-scheduled residency in the school holiday mornings on BBC1 to be getting on with. Closer inspection, however, will reveal that those wassailing musical notes look decidedly unmelodious, and indeed it transpires that he has somehow corralled Bugs Bunny, Tom, Jerry, Basil Brush, Olive Oyl and Popeye into singing entirely different carols to each other at the exact same time, sort of like a licenced animated character-based remount of that Flaming Lips album split across four CDs. The target of this incisive wit remains sadly elusive – as this issue dates from 1983 it can’t have been Band Aid – but it is nonetheless glaringly noticeable that he has not convinced the main cast to TV Comic‘s recent big new signing Tales Of The Gold Monkey to take part. They’d probably have wanted to sing that O Christmas Tree with the wrong words thing anyway.

Buy A Book!

There’s tons more about the small=screen antics of the assorted regulars of TV Comic in The Golden Age Of Children’s TV, available in all good bookshops and from Waterstones here, Amazon here, from the Kindle Store here and directly from Black And White Publishing here.

Alternately, if you’re just feeling generous, you can buy me a coffee here. He’d enjoy those adverts more if it was Pink Blend!

Further Listening

Ricardo Autobahn recounted his love of the Pink Panther Bar – and his inability to determine what identifiable flavour it actually was – in Looks Unfamiliar here.