New Andy Capp Collection Number 1: No. 1 (The Andy Capp Collection)

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Fed up at last, he joined the Northumberland Fusiliers in 1936 and was posted to Egypt. Then World War II broke out, and instead of being on active duty for the contracted seven years, Smythe served until 1946, 10 years. He was a machine gunner and had achieved the rank of sergeant by the time he left the service. Said Smythe: “I concocted a letter of reply in which I say that Andy probably raffles his dole money to make the extra cash! It was just the sort of thing the little rascal would do.” And Smythe’s father was known to wear a cloth cap. “Even when he played football!” his son claimed. “But on Sundays he would show respect and put on a bowler hat to be posh.” Andy's and Flo's best friends are their neighbours Chalkie and Rube White. Chalkie is a hard-drinking working-class type like Andy, who can often be seen sharing a pint with him at the corner pub, but Chalkie seems mellower than Andy, and more tolerant of his wife. Rube is Flo's confidante, and the two often trade gossip over the clothesline about their husbands' latest escapades. The local vicar is also often seen. Andy despairs of his holier-than-thou attitude, as he is constantly criticising Andy for his many bad habits and vice-ridden lifestyle. He often lets his opinion be known to Flo, who agrees with his low assessment of Andy's character.

Demobilized in 1946, Smythe returned to Hartlepool, but, unable to find work, he soon left for London. There, after an extended period of unemployment, he found a job at the General Post Office in 1950. He also married Vera Whittaker. Andy is a working-class figure who never actually works, living in Hartlepool, a harbour town in County Durham, in North East England. The title of the strip is a pun on the local pronunciation of "handicap"; and the surname Capp signifies how Andy's cap always covered his eyes along with, metaphorically, his vision in life. Handicap racing and handicapping, in sport and games, is part of betting, a favourite activity of Andy Capp. This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( August 2016) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) Smythe deliberately didn’t give the Capps children. In childless marriages, he believes, the man becomes the child, and the woman, the mother. The miracles,” he elaborated, “were there to get attention. Nobody would’ve taken notice of Jesus Christ had he been an ordinary fellow and not performed his miracles. He cured a blind man—just like that! That’s the sort of thing that attracts attention and gets people interested. And it’s the same with Andy Capp. He attracts your attention with his boozing and all that.ASKED ONCE about what he thinks the appeal of his strip is, Smythe quoted a college professor, who said the strip was “beautifully observed.” a b Leatherdale, Duncan (23 March 2016). "The mirth and misogyny of Andy Capp". BBC Online . Retrieved 23 March 2016.

In the U.S., Andy Capp appeared in only forty-five papers the first year; in the second, the strip took off, appearing in over 400 newspapers. By the 1990s, it was in nearly a thousand U.S. papers a day. When Smythe died of lung cancer June 13, 1998, Andy Capp was in 1,700 newspapers in fifty-two countries, translated into fourteen languages—proving that a drunken layabout is unaccountably popular everywhere. To Americans, judging by the values they say they live by, Andy Capp represents everything they are taught from infancy to eschew energetically wherever possible. He’s an anti-role model. Yet despite his wholly unsavory behavior, he was immediately hugely popular in this country—a roaring success. Perhaps because readers saw him as “getting away with it”—with everything we’re all taught we shouldn’t do.

Andy and Flo are always on the cusp of poverty. Flo works as a charwoman (cleaning woman), but Andy is unemployed, and their amusements— drinking, playing cards and snooker, and, for Andy, gambling — take more money than they can be presumed to have. Andy borrows from Flo, but they’re still always in arrears on their rent. Readers sometimes write in to ask how Andy and Flo manage it.

Whenever this happened (also mainly in the earlier strips), the roles are then reversed, with Andy usually confronting Flo for being late from going to bingo and sometimes striking her with either his fist or chasing her out the door with a push broom or a chair with the intent to clobber her with said object. Percy is also always confronting Andy on the way he treats Flo. It's obvious Percy has a crush on Flo and believes he would treat her far better than Andy does. This has led the two men to fight.Early on, the Andy Capp strip was accused of perpetuating stereotypes about Britain's Northerners, who are seen in other parts of England as chronically unemployed, dividing their time between the living room couch and the neighbourhood pub, with a few hours set aside for fistfights at football games... But Smythe, himself a native of that region, had nothing but affection for his good-for-nothing protagonist, which showed in his work. Since the very beginning, Andy has been immensely popular among the people he supposedly skewers. [9] Victor E. Neuburg (1983). The Popular Press Companion to Popular Literature. Popular Press. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-0-87972-233-3. At some time during the night,” Smythe said, quoted by Lilley, “I did a drawing of my temporary character, and I tried to find a name for him over breakfast. I was due to present something to Bill Herbert that morning!