A short Q&A with Buff Halley, now retired, former Editor of the Victor comic, which was of course published by Buffs employer, DC Thomson in Dundee, Scotland.
Thanks to Buff for contributing & to his son Duncan for facilitating things via his home in Scandinavia !
Q: The
drawings of Pete Sutherland have always been the perfect embodiment
of Alf ( for me at least ). Can you help with some background on
Pete ?
Was he
an employee of DCT or a freelance ?
A : Pete Sutherland was a free-lance
artist.
( Since Buff's interview, I have been contacted by Pete
Sutherlands family & you can read more
here
)
What other
characters did he draw for DCT if any ?
He did draw
other characters for DC Thomson - the only one I recall is Joe Dodds, the hero of Hornet's light-hearted angling story "Cast,
Hook and Strike".
Q: Could you hazard
a guess at the date or year of his death ?
Which artists 'took over'
from PS after his death ?
A: Pete died, at a guess, in the late Seventies and then several other artists were used on "the Tough", but none with the same success.
Q: I enjoyed
listening to your memories of the creation of Alf's character in the
Victor by Bill Blaine & Gilbert Dalton in the BBC R4 feature.
What were Bill & Gilberts respective roles at DCT ?
A: Bill Blain was editor of both
Wizard and Rover and was later in charge of all DCT's boys' and
girls' publications.Gilbert Dalton was a free-lance author.
After consultation with Bill Blain, he wrote the "Tough" text
stories for Rover. These were later turned into picture-stories by
the editorial staff of Victor. When they ran out, other free-lance
writers ( J.O.Cornes was one ) wrote brand-new "Tough"
picture-stories to story-lines provided by the editorial staff and
after discussion with them.
Q: Lots
of the Victor stories are updates from the Rover written stories
from 1949-1959. Were those
original stories themselves updates from older ones in different DCT
titles ? How
did you decide which of the old stories would be updated versus
those that were to be created anew ?
A: From the start, Victor used a
mixture of these converted stories and original picture-stories. The
text stories used for conversion had to have strong characters and
story-lines, as only the bones of a plot could be accommodated in
the picture-story format.
Q:
In some earlier stories Alf is portrayed as a pretty aggressive
character, although by the late 60's Alf seemed an altogether
more loveable, agreeable character.
Was there pressure, either on you by DCT, or from you to the
writers, to make him more 'loveable' as time went by ?
A:
As for Alf Tupper becoming a more
lovable character as time moved on, Perhaps he did lose a little of
his original rawness, although he always reacted strongly to cheats
and snobs. But then Alf did grow up a bit - from an 18-year-old
apprentice welder to a journeyman in his twenties.
Q: Personally I saw Alf as a typical runner from
the 'Black country' & came into contact with plenty of similar
characters from Harrier clubs in that part of the world when I was
running cross country races. The BBC programme had people suggesting
the locations of the stories were in the Northumberland area.
Where in the country did YOU
believe Alf's home to be ?
A: As regards Alf's location, it
could be anywhere in industrial England - wherever the reader wanted
it to be.
Q: Alf's love of 'fish & Chips'
has become the characteristic that most people recall about
Alf from their childhood,
I wonder if you can recall when or how this came into the stories ?
A: Alf's liking for fish and chips was
always there as far as I remember. In the very first text story, he
wanted some but could not afford it!