Racing towards the end of my diary, April 1 - 7 1978

By April 1978 the pressure of my impending O levels and the general busying up of my life meant that I didn't have the time to do the heavily decorated diary I'd been producing since mid 1974. I still managed the nice touch of a fold-out section in which I've written by review of Close Encounters Of The Third Kind, but the rest of this period is just sped through.

In fact the letters I sent to Steve Noble in Bristol were where I was now putting my effort and, if he's  kept his copies of mine like I've kept my copies of his, then between us we have some record of what we were up to for the next 18 months or so, until student life really puts paid to diary writing time.

My Records For The Day are quite the obscurities. Who remembered Slade's Give Us A Goal or Bill Withers' follow up to Lovely Day called, amazingly, Lovely Night?

Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing and drawing for The Beano, Marvel, Doctor Who et al, runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries & art centres. email for details. Facebook, Twitter. Promo video here. 

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre: Roll Up! at The Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose, July 31st - Aug 25th 2019 at 9.30pm. On sale now!

Getting Cybernetic Arm Fitted - April 1 1977

Ho ho very satirical, wasn't I just the wag? Not only doing my April Fools Day in the style of my very first diary pages (the first of which you'll find here) but also packing the page with details of my many injuries including my Hunting Expedition on the Shetlands and the fitting of my cybernetic arm. Oh stop, my poor aching sides.

My Records For The Day include the obscure Star Gazer by Neil Diamond, me neither, and the classic Strawberry Fair - rifle rifle come and get an earful.

Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing and drawing for The Beano, Marvel, Doctor Who et al, runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries & art centres. email for details. Facebook, Twitter. Promo video here. 

The Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre: Roll Up! at The Gilded Balloon Patter Hoose, July 31st - Aug 25th 2019 at 9.30pm. On sale now!

Mercury's first gig - April 1 & 2 1976

Though not celebrated in pictures, and indeed no photos of the event exist, deep in the text of April 2nd 1976 you'll find the first and only gig by our band, then called Mercury. (Later that same year we became the legendary Walter Tottle).

Though my diary is more concerned with how hectic my day was - and it certainly seems to have been, from waking up with a killer cold, slogging through school, getting notice of the gig on the day, doing a paper round in the day, then playing in the school hall in the evening and not getting home till 10.30 - I can actually remember how the gig went.

We played House Of The Rising Sun, as an instrumental, because at this stage none of us was brave enough to sing, and at one point Nick's guitar fell over and he said 'shit' in front of the vicar. Why that didn't make it into the diary I do not know.

Check out that marvellous panel from On The Buses by Harry North, by the way. My Look-In comics, from which most of the illustrations in my diary, are going on eBay as I type and some buyers are expressing surprise that when I tell them the comics are cut to pieces, that they in fact as cut to pieces as I said they were. I eviscerated those magazines, all for the sake of a diary that no-one but me has seen until now.

My Records For The Day were minor classics that still leap immediately to memory, from the Carpenters and (maybe I wouldn't have recalled the name) Barry Mann.

Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing and drawing for The Beano, Marvel, Doctor Who et al, runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries & art centres. email for details. Facebook, Twitter. Promo video here. 

SCOTTISH FALSETTO SOCK PUPPET THEATRE: ROLL UP!

July 31 - Aug 25 - GILDED BALLOON Patter Hoose Edfringe - On Sale Now

Planet Of The Apes double bill - April 1st 1975

For April Fools Day 1975, in which I have indulged in no foolery myself though by this time Noel Edmonds was doing them regularly on his Radio 1 show so I must have heard that, I seem much more obsessed by Planet Of The Apes. I'm reading the Marvel comics adaptations (which, at time of writing, I have just flogged wholesale on eBay), and that night I go with Peter and David Lloyd to see not one but two POTA films at the cinema.

When was the last time you sat through a double bill in the cinema? That must be nearly 4 hours of movie we sat through. Catch me doing that today.

Interesting to read about Scout Bob A Job week, for which I was raising 15p a job. And I can remember that goose that chased us off Briggs' farm, though my memory's been much kinder to Banger Lloyd who I had totally forgotten hid in a ditch. He's a vicar now.

My records for the day are both losts beyond the mists of memory. Well done anyone at home who remembered Take Your Mama For A Ride by Lulu or Naughty by Charlie Drake, both of which sound much more like Scissor Sisters records than anything else.

Kev F Sutherland, as well as writing and drawing for The Beano, Marvel, Doctor Who et al, runs Comic Art Masterclasses in schools, libraries & art centres. email for details. Facebook, Twitter. Promo video here. 

SCOTTISH FALSETTO SOCK PUPPET THEATRE: ROLL UP!

July 31 - Aug 25 - GILDED BALLOON Patter Hoose Edfringe - On Sale Now