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THE OiNK SCRAPBOOK

28 December 2025 Phil Boyce 2 Comments

These days we can document our lives as much (or as little) as we like thanks to the phones that never leave our vicinity. In fact, now I’ve a cat living with me it’s become my camera that just so happens to have a phone built in. Back in the 80s the process of getting our hands on the photos we’d taken was a more involved process, for me it required trips to the local chemist and at least a 24 hour wait and everything! So we were a lot more selective with our documenting back then.

Over the last several years some of the OiNK team have either very generously sent me photos or shared them on the Facebook group which I’ve then saved. This has endied up becoming a little collection of its own. So I thought the festive season, when we’re taking lots of photos to capture new memories with each other as well as thinking back to our own younger days, would be the perfect time to show these off in a kind of random scrapbook-like post. And here we are.

Let’s kick off with Jeremy Banx (Burp, Mr. Big Nose).

“So this is me posing in front of some pictures I’d drawn of Supercar when I was about 4”, Jeremy tells me. “I’m looking dubious because my dad or my gran or maybe both had told me by taking the photo it would make my drawings come to life just like on TV. This of course did not happen and I’ve never trusted anyone since.”

Jeremy’s photo reminds me of the comics my friend Roger and I created as kids. Roger created The Battle-oids, The School Busters and The Wally, while I created WarBots, The Real Smoke Busters and The Idiot. (Hey, he inspired me!) Also, together with our friend Bruce we made a monthly comic for our primary school classroom called The Moo! But anyway, back to the OiNK team and David Leach (Psycho Gran, Dudley DJ)

“Reading that article again after all this time is funny”, said David when I asked him about it. “The strip I’m working on in that picture is the birthday strip for the OiNK anniversary issue, where Psycho emerges from a birthday cake. The story about me working for Bob Godfrey is true, he was the first person I worked for as a cartoonist, I did that for a year drawing Henry’s Cat. I was Bob Godfrey’s ghost artist.”

At the end of the article a potential new OiNK character who never made it into the comic is revealed. “Brian Damage was something I was noodling with back then, but never got beyond the planning stage, although he did become a female character called Maxine Damage: Hit Girl for Hire, that was drawn by Jim Cheung and scheduled to appear in a Marvel UK comic magazine I developed called HYPER. It was to be a frenzied monthly anthology based on the style of Japanese Manga and would have featured a strip called B.O.B about a sentient walking bomb walking through a battlefield in search of his target written by Banx.”

Co-editor Patrick Gallagher has shared a plethora of old photographs both online and over our email exchanges, often jazzing them up with graphics and behind-the-scenes insights, such as these example. Below, you can see OiNK photographer John Barry with a rather familiar looking crocodile in front of him, but it’s the unfinished sculpture in the background that caught my eye, hence the superimposed OiNK Book 1989.

As described by Patrick, “John also helped out when we were pitching the TV show Round the Bend. Here he’s sculpting a model of Doc Croc in clay and on the desk in the background is a cast from a previous sculpt based on the butcher on the cover of The OiNK Book 1989. Also on the desk is a junior hacksaw he moulded from Play Doh.” Typical Patrick!

You’ll also see in the background Ian Jackson’s cardboard cutout of Mary Lighthouse from the first OiNK Holiday Special casting a beady eye over John’s work. Speaking of Round the Bend, it was co-created by OiNK’s three editors, Patrick, Tony Husband and Mark Rodgers and was nominated for a Royal Television Award. Tony shared these photographs from the night of the awards event, the first showing (from left-to-right) Patrick, Mark and Tony, while the second also includes Mark’s partner and friend of the blog Helen Jones, and rather randomly Rory McGrath!

“Patrick, Mark and me at the Royal Television Awards with Round the Bend,” said Tony. “Where we came runners up so we got pissed, and me and Rory McGrath were nearly thrown out for shouting abuse at Richard Stilgoe, who was doing a set and we thought he was smug and shit.” (Stilgoe is a songwriter, musician and broadcaster and has contributed lyrics to Cats, Starlight Express and The Phantom of the Opera, in case you didn’t know.)

These weren’t the only photos in Tony’s archive. Next up is a wonderful collection of polaroids and snaps by OiNK photographer Ian Tilton that Tony scanned in, mainly of #30’s OiNK Awards when they worked with the Spitting Image Workshop to produce an apparently star-studded event. You’ll also see one of the actual celebrities, John Peel amongst the chaos, a photograph taken of Marc Riley as a disguised Snatcher Sam and Tony’s son, Paul Husband who you’ll also see in the next photo posing with some of his dad’s creations.

Today, Paul is a renowned commercial photographer and OiNK had its very own renowned snapper in the guise of Ian Tilton. That last photo in the collage was taken during the making of The Bully Who Went Bald in #2 and according to Tony, “With Marc all hunched over dressed like this, passers-by and car drivers were stunned and puzzled.” As for Ian, he has worked with such icons as Kurt Cobain, Iggy Pop and The Stone Roses, and has been praised by Q Magazine for “one of the six best rock photographs of all time”.

He also photographed the equally iconic (in my eyes anyway) cover to The OiNK! Book 1988 and there’s a special post about that cover and Ian’s other OiNK work which went up on the blog earlier this Christmas season. Something less plasticine based and more liquid based is next. Ian first met the OiNK guys at its launch party in some nice, plush pub in Manchester when he’d been asked to come along and take a portrait of the three editors for some pre-publicity. Family and friends were all watching as Ian attempted the photo session. “Attempted” being the operative word.

As told to me by Ian, trying to find Patrick, Mark and Tony had been difficult with the crowds in attendance, never mind trying to organise the three of them under his studio lights now that they were so drunk! Ian says it was great fun and the shots of them grinning and gurning were worth it. (I think we can all agree on that.) Not that they hung around though, they immediately ran back off to get even more drunk.

The next horrifying image is of Hunchback Boar of Scare Boars fame from #13, the last surviving member of the terrifying trio… or the only one we know the whereabouts of! According to Patrick he found him lurking under the lid of his scanner in the lead up to Halloween 2021, just in time for the review of 1986’s spooky spectacular. Check it out and you’ll even see a video of Patrick and the Scare Boar together again after two-and-a-half decades.

The next photos will be rather small when you click on them because that’s the size they were when shared by Patrick. First up is a photo of him and Marc Riley (of The Fall and BBC 6Music and creator of Harry the Head, Doctor Looney and When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth) on holiday, followed by a shot of some lucky pig pals getting to sit in on the recording of the OiNK 45 record. Not only did they get to meet Patrick and Marc (fresh back from that holiday and rather tanned), they also hung out with Frank Sidebottom himself, Chris Sievey. Then, a photo of Patrick with someone who didn’t work on OiNK but who you just might recognise.

Patrick met David Bowie when he was tasked with looking after him for half an hour before the Mark and Lard radio show (Mark Radcliffe and our own Marc). The photo was taken by David’s manager and you can tell Patrick’s just a little bit happy, can’t you? While there were no mentions or clippings on the Grunts pages mentioning this particular celebrity, Patrick tells me David Bowie confirmed he was a bona fide OiNK reader!

I’m going to wrap up our OiNK Scrapbook with some of my own photographs. The first time I met Patrick was during the days of the old blog. He was on a family vacation in Donegal and took the rather long drive to Belfast (across the island!) to see me in my old house to discuss some future projects. Not long after that I then got to meet Lew Stringer (Tom Thug, Pete and his Pimple, Pigswilla) and Davy Francis (Cowpat County, Greedy Gorb, Doctor Madstarkraving) at the Enniskillen Comic Fest.

I’ve spoken with Patrick and Lew ever since and count them as true friends. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Davy a few times over coffee or a Greggs sausage roll, and I’m glad to say he’s an absolute gent and a really funny guy to hang out with. In the photo with Davy is the fantastic Jenika Ioffreda (Vampire Free Style) and the last photo was taken during what ended up being a simply hilarious chat in a local bar after the comic con with Lew, Ian Richardson (Sinister Dexter, Captain America, Judge Dredd) and the man who had us in stitches most of the night, Yanick Paquette (Wonder Woman, Batman Incorporated, Swamp Thing).

Yes, these last few aren’t from the time of OiNK but they’re most definitely memorable moments from the time of the OiNK Blog. Maybe one day I should share more of the behind-the-scenes of this site and the work (and fun) that goes into it, but for now we’ll close the OiNK Scrapbook. These photos are just the smallest of hints at what it must’ve been like to put our favourite anarchic comic together.

Wouldn’t it be great to know more…?

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THE OiNK! 45: THE ViNYL FRONTiER

6 December 2022 Phil Boyce 3 Comments

Back in 1987 a unique piece of merchandise for a comic was announced in the pages of OiNK. In issue #37 we were treated to this full page advertisement featuring Marc Riley as petty thief Snatcher Sam and Chris Sievey in his role as celebrity superstar Frank Sidebottom. They’d come together to record The OiNK 45, a single-sized vinyl record available only through mail order in the comic.

Back in the premiere issue OiNK had launched itself onto the unsuspecting public with a free flexidisc, a floppy piece of pink see-through plastic containing two songs, namely the imaginatively titled The OiNK Song and The OiNK Rap. Marc produced and performed both and they proved a hit with the kids and an annoyance to the parents of said kids, which I’m pretty sure was the idea. Now they’d been rerecorded at Drone Studios by Marc and Frank with engineer Paul Roberts, alongside a brand new song.

When I saw the advert for the first time I immediately begged my parents to write a cheque for the record. I remember the agonisingly long wait for it to arrive and then my mum and dad wished it hadn’t. I played it almost non-stop for a few days, being told several times to turn it down. Let’s just say it wasn’t to everyone’s taste. As I said, annoying readers’ parents may have been the idea behind the songs in the first place.

I’d missed out on the original flexidisc first time around so had no idea two of these were new versions of previous songs. I remember loving The OiNK Psycho Rap (as it was now called) as a kid on The OiNK 45, written by Tony Husband and Marc, and when I finally got my hands on #1 decades later for the blog with a mint condition flexidisc I’ll admit I was confused as to why I’d liked it so much! The answer is that the newer version here is completely different and a whole lotta fun. The words are almost the same but it’s more professionally put together. While I’m still not going to blast it at get togethers with friends, it may find its way on to my HomePod.

Fortunately for my parents, but heartbreakingly for me, just a few weeks after it arrived back in 1987 I ended up playing it for the very last time. I’d taken the record out of the hifi in my room and placed it on my bed without its sleeve while I listened to something else. It ended up being a sunny day so off I went outside to play with friends for the afternoon. When I came back I found out to my horror what happens when a vinyl record sits under a skylight on a day like that.

It was badly warped, looking like a disused napkin someone had tossed aside. I was crushed. My parents refused to buy me another, telling me it was a lesson to learn (in reality it had brought peace to the house once more) and, having not yet made a cassette recording so I could take the songs outside with me, that was the last I listened to it. Only now have I been able to hear these versions (and the third song) for the first time since then, 35 years later.

This past summer I was finally able to track down a copy of the record and I’ve waited until now to listen to it as a special festive treat for pig pals. This should be interesting with my now-adult ears! First up, the cover art was compiled by Marc Riley and the photographs on the back and on the adverts were taken by OiNK’s resident photographer John Barry under co-creator/co-editor of the comic and co-designer for the project (alongside Marc) Patrick Gallagher’s direction.

There’s a reference to Mike Gallagher brewing the tea too. This was Patrick’s brother who played sax at the studio sessions (he was also in Frank’s Oh Blimey Big Band) as well as making the refreshments, clearly. Patrick tells me altogether they recorded roughly 50 takes of all three tracks but ended up using the first of each! All that remains now is to place the vinyl carefully into my record player and crank the volume up. We’ll start with the new versions of The OiNK Psycho Rap and The OiNK Song (written by Mark Rodgers and Marc). You’ll be glad to hear the latter is still sung by high-pitched pigs.

The OiNK! Psycho Rap written by Tony Husband and Marc Riley

The OiNK! Song written by Mark Rodgers and Marc Riley

Lyrics page from #1 by Patrick Gallagher

Unfortunately there were no lyrics sheets with the record so young me had a hell of a time understanding those piggies, however the lyrics were printed in the first issue. Only a few words have been changed here and there for the rap, so feel free to use that photo above to follow along.

Apologies that I have no fancy equipment to record the songs in lossless quality (or whatever it’s called), you’ll have to make do with my video recording it with an ever-tiring outstretched arm.

“What the heck you think you’re doing, you?”
Frank Sidebottom, The OiNK Get-Together Song

On the B-side is the brand new song, The OiNK Get-Together Song. Chris sings along with Marc in the previous songs and Frank even makes a small guest appearance in The OiNK Song when he realises he’s on the wrong track and asks the listener to turn the record over. This next song is twice as long and sees him in his usual place as lead singer, with Little Frank constantly asking when he’ll get to contribute. It’s billed as a song starring characters from the comic, however the reality is much different (and funnier) than you might expect.

The OiNK! Get-Together Song written by Frank Sidebottom (Chris Sievey)

In my head this song had included various impressions of characters but instead we’re introduced to them playing instruments or making lots of loud background noise. Of course it would be this! Highlights include it descending into chaos on more than one occasion, especially when Billy Bang and the Street-Hogs get involved, Frank and Little Frank’s arguments getting more and more aggressive and there are cameos from some long forgotten characters such as Billy’s Brain and ‘Ed Banger.

My own personal favourite moment is when Frank messes up and just readily admits it right there in the song!

It’s a genuinely funny record and I’d heartily recommend splashing out the few quid it costs on eBay when it pops up, but let’s just say I think I can understand where my parents were coming from when they refused to buy a replacement once they’d escaped it. Brilliant stuff and very typically ‘OiNK’. No other comic could’ve done this. If you do decide to buy it for yourself just be warned, the sax in The OiNK Get Together Song will be stuck in your head from now until the end of time, whether you want it in there or not.

Above you’ll see Mike Gallagher as part of Frank’s band in a photo Patrick sent me, alongside an image of the original test pressing of the vinyl shared by Tony Husband on the OiNK Facebook Group. The final photo features the children of the studio owner and a very tanned/rosy/burnt Marc Riley and Patrick Gallagher, who may have just come back from holiday according to Patrick himself.

The OiNK 45 and the mug were the only pieces of merchandise I had as a kid so it’s great to own them both again. This has genuinely been a whole lot of fun to revisit. It was another contributing factor to what I refer to as the Golden Age of my very favourite comic of all time.

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OiNK! FREE CRASH EDiTiON

3 July 2022 Phil Boyce Leave a comment

This is a somewhat unique addition to OiNK’s run and one I missed out on at the time, despite it being briefly advertised in #32. I can only blame my young self’s lack of attention span for that one. Given away free with #48 of ZX Spectrum computing magazine Crash, this 16-page freebie (the pages are smaller than usual, made to slide inside the A4 Crash) contained all new material from a variety of OiNK contributors. As a tie-in with the new computer game it was an original idea and a smart move, potentially a great way of bringing new readers over to the comic.

I’ve already covered the magazine’s OiNK article which contained an interview with co-editor Tony Husband and a special Frank Sidebottom page, so let’s take a look inside the comic that came with it. We’ve a superb Ian Jackson cover to begin, with Uncle Pigg playing the game on a Spectrum computer which leads to a strip inside featuring him and Mary Lighthouse (critic) in a take on Max Headroom. But it’s across the page from this that things take a turn for the weird.

Lew and Mark decided the strips would work best if they reflected the gameplay

Lew Stringer’s Pete and his Pimple and Tom Thug strips feel a little off and originally I couldn’t quite put my finger on why. Pete’s strip has a different name and basically his pimple goes on a bouncing spree (complete with dog-like yelping noises), flattening some bullies in the process. It’s a bit tame compared to normal, and in Tom’s strip he’s driving about in a ‘Thugmobile’ shooting bovver boots out of a cannon at invading zombies! It’s a dream of course. He awakes to say he’s doesn’t know why he’d dream that but his bedroom is full of zombie posters and toys, something never mentioned before in OiNK. How bizarre.

Don’t get me wrong, both are enjoyable strips, however there’s a reason they feel very different than normal. Lew and co-editor Mark Rodgers decided they’d work best if they reflected the gameplay in the OiNK game. But since that didn’t really reflect the comic (and instead was made up of mini-games with the characters shoehorned in) their strips in turn don’t really reflect their usual hilarious outings. Pete’s game was a Breakout clone, bouncing a ball (his pimple) to break bricks, for example. I’m also not quite sure why Pete’s pus is suddenly green, although Patrick Gallagher did confirm they did the colour separations and not Crash.

There are some funny moments here, like the sound effects used in Pete’s strip being classic comic titles such as ‘Pow!’ and ‘Wham!’ and of course the word ‘Crash’ is used as much as possible! David Haldane’s Rubbish Man is the third and final strip of a character featured in the game and unfortunately it’s pretty poor, with Boy Blunder playing the game while our hero dispatches some random vegetable villains in the background. None of his smelly powers (or even his smell) feature at all, so as a pig pal it just feels rather bland.

“He defeated the dreaded Three-headed Politician of Gassbagg!!”
Mutant Space Barbarian Magic Warriors of Doom

Much better is the double-page spread in the middle of the comic drawn by J.T. Dogg. Written by Mark Rodgers the title Mutant Space Barbarian Magic Warriors of Doom sums up some of the ludicrous names we were subjected to for some of the less-than-great gaming titles back in the 80s. It centres on an arcade machine with somewhat magical powers. Perhaps inspired by Tron, it’s a much more colourful affair with Dogg’s excellent artwork.

With its fast-paced humour, daft ending and some 80s satire it’s the best introduction to OiNK possible for Crash readers. That ending in particular had me laughing. With all of that build up, the heroic deeds and all of Mike’s victories, for it all to be torn down in a couple of sentences and the whole world to fall into despair as a punchline is great stuff. Classic Mark, really. Billed as “An Interactive Comic Strip” for the computer mag, in reality it boils down to a competition for the readers to send in suggestions of what poor Mike saw that turned him into a pile of Angel Delight.

The address for this competition is OiNK’s, meaning the winning entrants would be published in the comic instead of the magazine. We’re almost at a simply superb contribution from Frank, but first here’s a quick look at some of the other highlights. Mary Lighthouse (critic) isn’t too happy with Uncle Pigg’s simulation of her in that Max Headroom-inspired strip, you can see part of Tom Thug’s strange dream based on the game, Harry the Head scares a show off on the school computers and this issue was the perfect place for a reader’s Groovy Graphics.

**Mary Lighthouse** written by *Mark Rodgers*, drawn by *Ian Jackson*
**Tom Thug** by *Lew Stringer*
**Harry the Head** by *Marc Riley*

Up next Frank Sidebottom has a text-heavy (which suits the magazine) double-page spread and it contains an extraordinary amount of work on the part of his alter ego, Chris Sievey. From the introduction that pokes some fun at the Sinclair ZX81 (accurate though, so he’s done his research) to his piece about the “fiddly bits inside computers” and his funny facts about the machines (and neighbours) that includes praise for Clive Sinclair’s infamous C5 personal cycle, it’s a delight to read.

It also contains some actual working type-in programs for ZX Spectrum users. These little gems are not only working programs, they’re funny in their own right. Complete with cut-out cassette covers which hilariously had nothing to do with what was on the screen (but none for Little Frank‘s game, naturally), one ‘game’ would basically select a random point on the screen and you had to use your cursor to find it in a trial-and-error fashion. The other was a linear romantic story where all you’d do is hit a key to read the next line and it’d give you a couple of choices to get slightly different compliments about what a nice young woman you are.

Oh and Little Frank’s program prints “l.f. is better than f.s.” at random points on the screen. Silly and pointless, but that in itself was the whole point.

To round things off for potential new OiNK readers what else could be on the back page but a GBH madvertisement? The 80s was a very exciting time for what would become a multi-billion pound industry worth more than the movie and television markets! Everything was brand new and younger people in particular jumped at the chance to become part of it, creating their own games from home, just like a lot of the mainstream games were back then. GBH clearly saw an opening in the market for ripping people off.

The pictures for this were taken by OiNK’s resident photographer John Barry and that lady at the computer (that contraption is so funny in itself!) is John’s wife at the time, Ike Walton. Thanks to co-editor Patrick Gallagher for the info. Unfortunately the names of the children and that wonderful old man have been lost to the mists of time.

If you’re interested in tracking down this unique little issue of OiNK it also includes Billy Bang, Horace (Ugly Face) Watkins, Mr Big Nose, Burp and Hugo the Hungry Hippo. While I do believe some strips would’ve been a much better introduction for their characters and the comic if they hadn’t tried to tie themselves into the game, I completely understand why they chose to do so. It’s still a funny wee comic and a unique edition that no OiNK collection is complete without.

Quite a few posts make up the blog’s coverage of the OiNK game, beginning with the preview in Zzap!64, an in-depth look at the Crash magazine this comic was bundled with and a Retro Gamer article from 2021 containing an interview with the game’s creator. Still to come on is the Zzap!64 review of the game itself and later in the year a couple of issues of Commodore Format in which they gave the game away free but under a different name, then detailed how to beat it.

But probably most excitedly for established pig pals who picked this issue up were the first images of two things coming later in 1987, in a promo by Patrick. Stick with the blog, folks.