Sorry. I got a little over-excited there, and managed to post a blank form.

You're dead right, Michael, and I'm wrong. I've just dug out my own copy of The Andy Capp Spring Collection (published in 1960 according to the Tony's Trading site) and there it is! That cartoon slipped my mind when I came across the Reg & Vera story Ken Layson tells, and so I relied on using the much later strip instead for my comparison.

If you'd like to turn your posts above into a letter for PlanetSlade, using the e-mail link below, I'd be delighted to run it there next time I update the Correspondence pages. That'd give me a chance both to cite your own, much better, example of the joke in action and credit you with spotting it when I hadn't.

http://www.planetslade.com/contact.html

Thanks very much for pointing this out. Embarrassing as it sometimes is when people catch me in an error, it does at least show that people are reading the stuff and that more than makes up for it.