Return Of The Funny Comics Fan Club

The highly acclaimed podcast The Funny Comics Fan Club is returning for a second season in January and starts by looking at one of Britain’s most inventive comic books.

In each episode of The Funny Comics Fan Club the hosts - comedian John Dredge and academic Doctor Mark Hibbett - read through an issue of an old British weekly comic. The first season was named as Podcast Of The Week by The Radio Times and was one of its Top Ten recommended shows, between George Clooney’s new series and “Threads”! It was also featured in The Sunday Times, BBC Radio London and topped the UK’s Comedy Fiction podcast charts.

So far Mark and John have talked about The Beano, Krazy Comic, Whizzer & Chips, Topper, The Dandy, TV Comic and more. As well as dipping into the history of these series they’ve also ended up discussing Basil Brush’s career as a landlord, the ongoing war between swordfish and sword swallower, the use of knit-stitching devices, and where exactly hoedowns are supposed to happen.

The new series, premiering on Monday 13 January, starts with an in-depth look at Cheeky Weekly from 1978. This was the only British kids’ weekly ever to present itself as a single story, with the titular character linking all the strips into a single – and not always very coherent - narrative. Later episodes will look at its main competitor, Plug, as well as other well-known comics such as Buster, Beezer and Oink.

The Funny Comics Fan Club is available in all good newsagents and from all good podcast suppliers. Images of the strips talked about can be found on their Twitter, Facebook and Instagram pages so you can read along!