Hogmanay - Dec 30 & 31 1974

This is the first of my diaries to record the Sutherland family's legendary Hogmanay party. I say record, obviously being my diary it makes no mention of anything or anybody and devotes most of its space to TV shows and pop records. But we learn that the party started at midnight and I, aged 13, lasted till 1.15 in the morning. Lightweight.

The Star Trek pictures, which this chapter of my diary is peppered with, were cut from my weekly Valiant and TV21 comics, rendering them near worthless when I finally put them on eBay 45 years later.

My Records For The Day include something called Feet which, elsewhere in the diary, I discover was by someone called Mark Stephens. Researching this post I've heard for the first time since. It's not half bad.

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 will be touring near you sometime. Catch up with them on Facebook for the latest. 

Fold-out Osmonds - March 30 1975

A novel bit of page design from my diary of March 30th and 31st 1975, allowing me to squeeze the entire Osmond family into the page, coinciding with their TV special on the telly.

My diary suggests I did nothing but watch TV all these days, but clearly I was illustrating these pages while in front of the telly. Also, surrounding diary entries suggest, I was writing and drawing ongoing comic series, including my own version of Planet Of The Apes which seems to have run to more than 30 issues, and my superhero team the Galactic Union Of Superheroes, which you see references in those little squares at the outside corners of the pages. These are my versions of the Marvel diary panels that had been in recent comics.

I was also working on a movie, Blunderbirds, as other entries record, still to be blogged. Till then, let us enjoy again the faces of the Osmonds and those teeth which were, at the time, the whitest thing that had been seen on British TV. I remember Clive James commenting that, if you turned the brightness down on your telly, all you'd see are those teeth floating there. We took him literally and tried it.

My Records For The Day include the winner of the previous night's Eurovision Song Contest, a song I still love to this day.

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 will be touring near you sometime. Catch up with them on Facebook for the latest. 

Leela and Happy Dayz - October 29 1976

Ooh look it's Leela off of Doctor Who, drawn by me from a picture in the paper, though Doctor Who's not on the telly that week so it must have been about to start. Not, I confess a big mystery there.

A bigger mystery is the book 8 Happy Dayz and whatever became of it. In this diary, written at the end of half term week, Nick and I have clearly been writing a book I'd totally forgotten about, called Happy Dayz. And, if memory serves, it was a book looking back at the week long school trip to the Italian alps we'd enjoyed in April that year. Which begs two questions. Where is this Happy Dayz book, cos I can't remember seeing it since. And where are my diary pages from April 1976, was it really that memorable a holiday? I'll have to dig them out and see.

My Records For The Day run the gamut from A for awful to B for bemusing. Jonathan King, who you don't hear much on the radio these days; Lalo Schifrin's theme for Starksy and Hutch, which which I seemed enamoured; and Rock Me Baby by the Steve Miller Band, which showed I wasn't totally bereft of taste.

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 will be touring near you sometime. Catch up with them on Facebook for the latest. 

Frank Bellamy - October 23 1976

Will you look at that picture by Frank Bellamy? If you're not familiar with his work, check it out. He did a legendary run on Dan Dare, created Heros The Spartan in the Eagle, and was the long running artist on the Daily Mirror strip Garth, but it was his illustrations for Doctor Who in the Radio Times that I had in my collection. And look how I treated them. Hacked out and stuck into my diary with cow gum.

My diary is as eventful as ever, trudging round the shops with Mum and moaning about what TV shows I've missed. I also seem to have written and/or drawn a strip called The Moronic Man, of which history has no record. It was a while before I was to have anything published.

This Bellamy illustration was for 1975's Doctor Who story Terror Of The Zygons. And we can see from the TV listings that, on Saturday, Sarah Jane's final adventure The Hand Of Evil was on.

My Records For The Day are classics, though one seems to have been a new release, If You Leave Me Now by Chicago. Andy Kim remains a favourite and, being two years old at the time, was obviously already one then too. Did that sentence make any sense?

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 will be touring near you sometime. Catch up with them on Facebook for the latest. 

Linda Smith & Henry Normal - Monkhouse October 17 1988

A legendary line up graced the stage of The Monkhouse Comedy Club in Leicester in October 1988. Linda Smith headlined, supported by Henry Normal.

The club was run and hosted by Alan Seaman, who can take credit for booking the acts, most of whom also stayed overnight on the floor of his flat in Clarendon Park, and myself. I did the posters, including this one, produced with a mix of Letraset, freebie typesetting (which I would get done alongside official jobs at the design company I worked at, and much photocopying.

The shows took place every month above The Magazine pub on Newarke Street Leicester. Don't look for it, it's not there any more (demolished in the 1990s to make way for the Newarke Business Centre).

Linda Smith was easily the funniest act we'd had that year, and went on to be the star of radio 4's The News Quiz, before her untimely death to cancer in 2006. Henry Normal, then a performance poet, went on to work with Steve Coogan and co-found Baby Cow Productions, one of the most successful television production companies in the country. In 1988 they were both playing above a pub in Leicester for less than fifty quid each.

More on Linda Smith
More on Henry Normal

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 will be touring near you sometime. Catch up with them on Facebook for the latest. 

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!