Busker Jim

This is the start of a fairly complete run of the strips (hey, this was all the time I had access to a scanner).  These have been scanned from photocopies, as I'm not sure where many of the original strips got to: the quality is often lacking and they even look a bit yellow (though jpgs are preferable).  Don't know yet whether I'll do a selection or the whole run. These strips are saturated in the early '80s in every respect (maybe that's not a good thing).  One of the artefacts of the scanning process is that Jim's usually evenly grey jacket has turned into tweed.

These are all © Copyright, Ian Thomas, 1984.
 

This was the first "Busker" strip I ever did and the first appearance of the saxophone-player, Jim.  His dog had been around in my work for many years, always looking just as he does here.  These four strips were the submission that got me the regular spot in "City Extra."  The reference here was to the fact that Culture Club were touring and, incredible as it may seem now, even their (genuinely female) backing vocalist was a household name.

The editor of "City Extra" must have liked this strip a lot as it got reprinted at least twice after this, when another strip (usually controversial) was rejected.

The original title of the newspaper was something far more incomprehensible, but the editor suggested that I change it to something closer to the real catchcry of some newspaper sellers.  Quite an obvious gag, but it wouldn't work these days, due to the disappearance of these once familiar figures.

Anyone who has ever performed live knows that there are usually other entertainers among us, ever ready to locate our Achilles' heel.  Jim's mistake is in not having some devastating witty repartee ready, but then that would make him a different character altogether.

A classic case of editorial interference was the change in this joke  (don't get me wrong, I mostly think highly of this particular editor).  Originally, the strip was to do with Jim's increasing stagefright and decreasing energy in the face of a real crowd.  However, this got changed to a gag about his commitment to exact working hours, with the addition of the clock: a completely different sort of joke (and not mine).

Wow, check out those shoulder-pads!  As was often the case, many of the people are loosely based on people I knew: colleagues, etc.

I remember discussing this idea with my saxophone-teacher at the time, which we both found pretty amusing.  Not so many of those open trams these days, but Australians may notice that car is going in the wrong direction!

 
I've deindexed the rest of these pages for now, to try to reduce my bandwidth usage a bit.

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