Tammy 20 August 1983

Cover artist: John Armstrong

Namby Pamby (artist Eduardo Feito, writer Ian Mennell)

Bella (artist John Armstrong, writer Primrose Cumming)

Welcome, Stranger! (artist Douglas Perry, writer Chris Harris) – Pony Tale

Room for Rosie (artist Santiago Hernandez, writer Alison Christie)

Holiday Miss Title! (writer Maureen Spurgeon) – Quiz 

Fate – or Fortune? (artist Carlos Freixas, writer Maureen Spurgeon) – complete story

The Button Box (artist Mario Capaldi, writer Alison Christie)

Backhand Play (artist Phil Gascoine, writer Ian Mennell)

Make Your Mind Up, Maggie (artist Juliana Buch)

Pretty Tidy (Chris Lloyd) – feature 

We had this issue before, but the post disappeared for some reason. So here it is again for 1983 issue in our Tammy August month round. 

Inside is one of the most historic moments in the saga of Bella Barlow – the moment when her arch-antagonists, Jed and Gert Barlow, make their final bow and disappear from her strip for good. We never thought we’d see the day. This was an astonishing move for Tammy to take, and we have to wonder what was behind it. Did ye Editor get tired of them or something? Anyway, good riddance to them. Our only regret is that although they had their karmic low points (including prison), they were never really punished for their treatment of Bella. 

In our other stories, Pam’s ridiculously overprotective mother does it again in “Namby Pamby”. The moment she hears Pam’s in a swimming match, she races to the pool, barrelling through the crowd and screaming hysterics, just because she thinks her precious little baby’s catching a chill. Oh, for crying out loud! Pauline Wheeler thinks she’s found “Room for Rosie” pretty quickly, but the new home falls through, so back to square one. No doubt this will be the first in a long string of failed homes before Rosie finds the One. “Backhand Play” is now on its penultimate episode, and it sets the stage for the final one: showdown between the tennis club and their backhand-playing tennis officer, Terry Knightly’s uncle, who’s now making an utter mockery of tennis. And the complications over juggling between riding and ballet get even worse for Maggie in “Make Your Mind Up, Maggie”.

Tammy’s complete stories are now the Button Box series, a Pony Tale series, and a self-contained complete story, a number of which had a supernatural theme. Some of them were reprints of Strange Stories, others were totally new and credited, giving us insight as to who might have written the spooky completes of the past.

Tammy 11 June 1983

Cover artist: Phil Gascoine

Portrait of Doreen Gray (artist Tony Coleman (credited as George Anthony), writer Charles Herring)

The Button Box (artist Mario Capaldi, writer Alison Christie)

Backhand Play (artist Phil Gascoine, writer Ian Mennell) – first episode

School Days (artist Phil Townsend, writer Ian Mennell) – complete story

Enchanted June (artist Alma Jones, writer Maureen Spurgeon) – feature 

Bella (artist John Armstrong, writer Primrose Cumming)

Different Strokes (artist Santiago Hernandez, writer Charles Herring)

Jaws Three (artist Phil Townsend, writer Gerry Finley-Day)

Pam of Pond Hill (artist Bob Harvey, writer Jay Over)

Heatwave! (Mari L’Anson) – feature 

Now we come to the 1983 issue in our Tammy June month round. As it so happens, the issue has a feature about popular British folklore in June (below), which makes it even more flavoursome for our June month theme. At this time, Tammy liked to run a feature on a particular month and the folklore that went with it.

We are now in the era where Tammy ran credits and her covers used story illustrations taken from the panels inside. Jinty did the same thing for several years before she changed to Mario Capaldi covers on 21/28 June 1980. This era of Tammy also had a new logo.

This issue has a gorgeous Phil Gascoine cover, which heralds Gascoine’s new story, “Backhand Play”, the last tennis serial Tammy published. A number of tennis stories appeared in Tammy over the years, such as “Backhand Billie” and “Double – Or Nothing!”. But the one that has to be the classic is “Becky Never Saw the Ball”, about a tennis player making a comeback after going blind. 

Bella and Pam of Pond Hill continue as the regular characters. There are two other regulars strips that appear now. One is a weekly complete story, with themes ranging from the supernatural to romance. Some of these completes reprint old Strange Stories, with text boxes replacing the Storyteller. The other is “The Button Box”. The Button Box is a storyteller theme (minus the supernatural), with Bev Jackson bringing a story every week from her button box. Each button has a story to tell, and often a moral along with it. This week’s moral: if you show a little kindness, it will be rewarded. Like having your life saved, which is what happens with the only man who showed kindness to a beggar girl who is bullied by everyone else in an Italian village. 

Tammy has had a higher number of serials since she dropped a lot of old regulars on 17 July 1982. And now she has credits, we can not only see who is behind the stories but also the types of stories some of her writers favoured. For example, we can see from the credits that Alison Christie favoured heart-tugging emotional stories and Charles Preston spooky completes. Perhaps Preston used to write on Strange Stories, Gypsy Rose and Misty. Other writers, such as Malcolm Shaw, Ian Mennell and Charles Herring, wrote on a wider variety of genres. 

Tammy 16 July 1983

• Namby Pamby (artist Eduardo Feito, writer Ian Mennell)
• Horsepower! (artist Julian Vivas, writer Chris Harris) – A Pony Tale
• Backhand Play (artist Phil Gascoine, writer Ian Mennell)
• Portrait of Doreen Gray (artist Tony Coleman, writer Charles Herring)
• Bella (artist John Armstrong, writer Primrose Cumming)
• The Button Box (artist Mario Capaldi, writer Alison Christie)
• The Lady of Ranoch Water (artist Hugo D’Adderio, writer Roy Preston) – complete story
• Make Your Mind Up, Maggie (artist Juliana Buch)

This Tammy issue contains one of my favourite complete stories, “The Lady of Ranoch Water” (a remarkably flattering name for a witch who’s a hideous old hag!). “The Lady of Ranoch Water” appears below. It was written by Roy Preston, and the Tammy credits of the period show Preston specialised in creepy complete stories, often with comeuppances. This begs the question: what spooky complete stories (Misty completes, Strange/Gypsy Rose Stories, Monster Tales) did Roy Preston write for IPC in the past?

The other complete story, “Horsepower!”, has a horse competing with progress when Pa gets ideas about getting a tractor to replace him, much to the horror of his daughter Maisie. The tractor seems to be more efficient, but in the end the weather and climate of the locality prove the horse more practical and keep horses in business there for a long time. Relief for Maisie!

Pam of Pond Hill is on summer break, which gives scope for more serials to run. No doubt one will be replaced by Pam when she returns in the autumn, as promised by the Editor.

The extremely overprotective upbringing Pamela Beeton has received since birth (her mother could give Mum in “Mummy’s Boy” from Buster a run for her money) has rendered her little more than a three-year-old in emotional and psychological development. Consequently, she acts like a baby at school, which has earned her the nickname “Namby Pamby”, and her seriously stunted growth puts her even more on a back foot than other serials where protagonists struggle with overprotective parents. At least she is trying and has found a friend, but her overprotective mother is beginning to interfere.

In “Backhand Play”, Arthur Knightly is the King of Backhanders and his motto is “Never miss a trick”. He doesn’t cross the line to anything illegal, but his backhanders are causing a lot of problems for his niece Terri, who only wants to play tennis. Terri has discovered her backhander uncle has been applying them to her tennis club to give her favourable treatment and even compel a tennis player to throw a match in her favour. She refuses to return to the club in protest and the coaches sell their cars to deal with Arthur and get her back.

The “Portrait of Doreen Gray” (yes, and the story itself makes reference to a certain Oscar Wilde story) is making shy Doreen Gray more confident, but there were hints from the beginning there was something sinister about it. Sure enough, Doreen’s confidence is threatening to turn into arrogance that could make her unpopular, and we suspect the portrait. This week, Doreen’s arch-enemy Jane Quarles begins to suspect what’s going on and starts investigating. She strikes gold – but then gets scared by a rat. Will she be scared off for good?

Oh, no! It looks like Bella is heading for another round of losing her nerve, and it’s all because of her Uncle Jed. He ropes Bella into a dangerous window-cleaning job and only Bella’s gymnastics save her from a horrible accident. But then Bella discovers the incident has affected her psychologically and she can’t perform gymnastics properly.

This week “The Button Box” brings us a romantic story about a boy and girl finding love on the beach and shells are at the centre of it all. Aww…

“Make Your Mind Up, Maggie” has been reprinted from 1974 by popular demand (the original run ended on a double episode to make way for the Tammy & June merger). Maggie is obliged to give up horse riding because it’s bad for her ballet. But this week Maggie discovers the alternative is her beloved horse Robbie being sold to the Brimstowes, who mistreat their horses (and nobody seems to call the SPCA about it). Now Maggie is in an awkward double life of doing both ballet and riding while keeping it secret from her ballet teacher. To make things even more difficult, Maggie is finding that ballet is just as bad for her riding as riding is for her ballet.

Phil Gascoine

It’s quite fitting that the first artist to be written about on this blog should be Phil Gascoine, who was in Jinty from the first issue (with Gail’s Indian Necklace) to the last one (with Badgered Belinda). His art is distinctive in any case but identification of him as the artist of these stories is indisputable, because he often signed his work with large, looping letters, as is the case in this page from ‘No Cheers for Cherry’.

Phil was a great all-rounder in story terms; very good at drawing pretty (but realistic) teenage girls, as above, but also well able to do sports stories, science fiction, and spooky magic that verged into horror.

List of Jinty stories attributable to Phil Gascoine:

• Gail’s Indian Necklace (1974; summary page)
• Bird-Girl Brenda (1974-75; summary page)
• Bet Gets the Bird! (1975)
• The Green People (1975)
• Golden Dolly, Death Dust! (1975-76; summary page)
• Fran of the Floods (1976; summary page)
• Girl in a Bubble (1976; summary page)
• Freda, False Friend (1977)
• No Cheers for Cherry (1978)
• The Changeling (1978; summary page)
• Prisoner of the Bell (1979)
• A Girl Called Gulliver (1979)
• Waves of Fear (1979; summary page)
• When Statues Walk… (1980)
• The Venetian Looking Glass (1980)
• Tears of a Clown (1980; summary page)
• No Medals for Marie (1981)
• Diving Belle (1981)
• Holiday Hideaway (1981; summary page)
• Badgered Belinda (1981; summary page)

List of Tammy stories credited to Phil Gascoine after the Tammy & Jinty merger:

• Nanny Young (1982-1983)
• Backhand Play (1983)
• Into the First at Trebizon (1983-1984)
• Raining Cats and Dogs (complete story 10 March 1984)
• I’m Her – She’s Me! (1984). Unfinished due to Tammy’s disappearance from a strike

Princess II stories attributed to Phil Gascoine:

• The Secret Swimmer (1984)