Tammy 5 November 1977

Cover artist: John Richardson

Bella (John Armstrong)

C.L.A.R.A. (artist Giorgio Giorgetti) – first episode

No Place for Children (artist Eduardo Feito)

Good Old Guy Fawkes! (feature)

Down to Earth Blairs (artist José Casanovas)

Bessie Bunter

Glennie’s Gift (Colin Merrett) – Strange Story

Selena Sitting Pretty (artist Diane Gabbot(t))

Edie the Ed’s Niece (artist Joe Collins)

Wee Sue (artist John Richardson)

Rowena and the Realms of Night (artist Peter Wilkes)

Here we have the Tammy Guy Fawkes issue from 1977. As you can see, it’s bang on the day. Inside, we have a couple of reminders about the Fireworks code, Guy Fawkes jokes, and a Guy Fawkes story from Bessie. Poor Bessie is confined to sick bay with a sore throat on Guy Fawkes Night. Undaunted, Bessie sneaks out of bed and finds weird masked figures who look like they’re going to blow up the school. She proceeds to have fun foiling them. But it’s just Miss Stackpole and the pupils re-enacting the Gunpowder Plot. Once that misunderstanding is cleared up, Bessie feels her throat cleared up enough to join the fireworks party. There are also a few references to bonfire night in “Down to Earth Blairs”, but the only fireworks are from Betsy when she gets on the wrong end of Dad’s swill collection. 

A new story, “C.L.A.R.A.” starts. Professor Crichenor (who looks more like he’s from the stage than the laboratory with that outfit of his) offers the services of his computer C.L.A.R.A. (Crichenor’s Learning And Reasoning Aid) to raise the falling academic and sporting performance of Glumthorpe Comprehensive. Although the PTA’s response is to throw Crichenor out – literally – he intends to prove himself. He’s going to begin by making our protagonist, Frances Cummins, more organised.

Oh, poor Bella! Some jealous girls put a shard of glass in her shoe to sabotage her performance and she’s cut her foot very badly. Nasty! Once her foot is bandaged she manages to perform sufficiently to get a medal, but now someone is raising an objection to it. 

The mystery of the missing children in Tarnbridge deepens. Postcards arrive from them, but there are no postmarks. And the parents are getting angry and demanding answers from Mr Nash about where their children are.

In the Strange Story, Lorna loses her sight after a rock hits her on the head at a crumbling ruin. Her guide dog Glennie grows critically ill, but before he dies he leads her back to the spot where the accident happened. Another rock falls and returns her sight. The Storyteller makes an annual pilgrimage to put flowers on Glennie’s grave on Lorna’s behalf.

Selena takes advantage of heavy rain to run in a race without anyone seeing her and realise she is no cripple. She manages to get back to her wheelchair and thinks she’s still sitting pretty – but then discovers she overlooked the tell-tale mud all over her shoes. Is she going to be unstuck this time, or will she find a way out of yet another close call?

Sue and her friends are at a department store in search of a birthday present for their art teacher, but Sue’s small size keeps getting her into all sorts of scrapes, including landing in a washing machine. However, her small size helps in the end when the teacher is locked out and needs someone to get into window. Then it’s birthday celebrations.

A pedlar informs Rowena of the full danger her brother faces at the hands of the Nightqueen: if he takes the hand of the Nightqueen’s daughter in the upcoming dance of night, he will join the legion of the living dead!

Tammy 29 October 1977

Cover artist: John Richardson

Bella (artist John Armstrong)

Down to Earth Blairs (artist José Casanovas)

No Place for Children (artist Eduardo Feito)

Melanie’s Mob (artist Edmond Ripoll) – final episode

Bessie Bunter

The Bird of Wisdom – the Strange Story

Selena Sitting Pretty (artist Diane Gabbot(t))

Say Hallo to Hallowe’en! – feature 

Wee Sue (artist John Richardson)

Rowena and the Realms of Night (artist Peter Wilkes)

We continue our Halloween theme with the Tammy Halloween issue from 1977. One of our Cover Girls is enjoying a Halloween party while something else appears to be enjoying her Tammy as much as she does. The Cover Girls years were very enjoyable for celebrating Halloween, Easter, Guy Fawkes and other occasions in light-hearted and often amusing ways. Inside, there is also a feature on Halloween customs.  

Wee Sue and her family have a day at the races. Sue takes a punt on a horse called Autumn Springer, which prompts Miss Bigger to do the same. Then Miss Bigger unwittingly causes Autumn Springer to bolt. They have to do something fast or lose their punts and the things they want to buy with them. 

In the Strange Story, Jean Regan is a brain, and there always seems to be a bird hanging around her when she does academic wonders. But her brains make her a know-all and show-off, and she becomes unpopular. She chases the bird off and finds she is reduced to middling scholar, but now she’s more popular and happy.

It’s the final episode of the popular “Melanie’s Mob”. Its replacement next week is a Giorgio Giorgetti story, “C.L.A.R.A.”, about a computer utilised to improve the declining sporting and academic achievements of Glumthorpe Comprehensive. But is it really the answer? In girls’ comics, computers have a track record of bringing their own problems. Anyway, we begin to find out in the Guy Fawkes issue.

Bessie has to prove her strength for a bet, with a treat at the tuck shop if she wins. Bessie tries to win the bet by cheating (naughty, naughty) but in the end wins (accidentally) by using her bulk as strength.

Betsy Blair’s father is opting for “The Good Life”, living off the land and bartering, after being made redundant. Betsy is finding the change very hard and demeaning when she has been used to such a posh, comfortable life. Plus a snobby neighbour is taking the mick out of her over it and a lot of classmates are laughing. Betsy invites them over for homemade scones, but it’s another big humiliation for her when Mum puts chicken feed in the scones by mistake. At this, Betsy cracks up and screams at her parents.

Bella’s at a Russian gymnastics college, which is going much better for her than in 1975, when a jealous pupil got her expelled before she’d hardly begun. But it looks like jealousy is rearing its ugly head again at a competition: Bella’s doing her floor routine and feels something sharp and painful in her shoe. 

“No Place for Children” – no, not a place where children are banned or is not appropriate for them. It’s a place where all the children are missing. Terri Jennings keeps hearing strange whispers from the adults that it’s somehow connected with wealth they expect to receive, the old quarry that has been sealed off, and kids gossiping.  

Selena Sitting Pretty, our girl pretending to be in a wheelchair at school, has struck another problem – some toughs have thrown her wheelchair into the river and she can’t get it out. She has to continue pretending being crippled to her schoolmates while thinking of a way to retrieve the wheelchair. She succeeds both ways and is sitting pretty again after this close shave. 

In “Rowena and the Realms of Night”, the sequel to “Rowena and the Doves”, Rowena has to rescue her brother Asser, who is in the power of the Nightqueen and her daughter Princess Ygerna. He doesn’t even realise what’s happening to him, and there are only three days left to rescue him. This week Rowena and her companions get trapped in the Caverns of Endless Night. The Caverns are so dark nobody can find their way out unless they are guided by a human voice.