Dad on a quiz show - Jan 25 1975

Who remembered my Dad had appeared in a quiz show on Radio Leicester? Not I. Though I do remember he was on some sort of board or other, as a result of which we used to get a free Radio Times every week.

And as if that weren't starry enough, check out my description of the work on my forthcoming feature film: "..typed the shooting script for my latest film, Blunderbirds. ...I started planning it earlier this month. So far I've worked out the casting and shooting plans." The film did get made, and I have it copied to VHS somewhere. Sadly it's not made it into Youtube yet. But someday I'm sure we'll all get to see it.

In my Records For The Day is Look Out For The Giant by The Wombles, which I can safely say I have not heard once in the intervening 45 years.

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. 

Mr Curtis - Jan 9 1975

An interesting little portrait here, of a "student teacher" called Mr Curtis, of which I have no memory. If he's out there anywhere, this is for him. In these early days of my diary (which I had started the previous summer) I was endeavouring to illustrate parts of my life, a tradition which soon evaporated. But here it continues, with me dressed as a tramp for a Tramps Supper, whatever one of those might be (at which I won a bar of soap, do people still run events like that these days?). I've also drawn myself in the bath. There are a few of these bath drawings in my diary, a very perplexing sight.

My Records For The Day run the gamut from maudlin to classic. Kevin Johnson's Rock And Roll I Gave You All The Best Years Of My Life is an odd one for me to relate to at the age of 13. Bizarre to see that the guy is singing about his musical career being over when, by his description, he's only been at it for about a decade ("bought all The Beatles records, sounded just like Paul"). That makes him younger than most of the acts on Jools Holland this year.

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. 

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.