George Nicholas, who devised Scouse Mouse, was always thinking of new projects. In the mid 90s, he'd had enough of doing these newspaper cartoons, so handed them over to me. At £30 a week (£5 per strip, per day!) it wasn't exactly the greatest job in the world, but it was work. Over about six years I must have written and drawn more than 2,000 of these! Here are a good sample of almost a week's worth as printed in the Liverpool Echo. If you're wondering, the mouse is called Scouse, the chicken is called Chaz- yes, a male- and the dog is called Sconedd- that's pronounced 'SCON-ED'. These were published in 1993. We knew that with a name like 'Scouse Mouse' we may not get much interest from regional or national newspapers, so we devised a cunning ruse of renaming the strip and the character. We tried 'Ricky Rodent', 'Rocky Rat' and 'Mike Mouse'- which was when we realized
it wasn't really going to work out. But we tried.
George Nicholas, who devised Scouse Mouse, was always thinking of new projects. In the mid 90s, he'd had enough of doing these newspaper cartoons, so handed them over to me. At £30 a week (£5 per strip, per day!) it wasn't exactly the greatest job in the world, but it was work. Over about six years I must have written and drawn more than 2,000 of these! Here are a good sample of almost a week's worth as printed in the Liverpool Echo. If you're wondering, the mouse is called Scouse, the chicken is called Chaz- yes, a male- and the dog is called Sconedd- that's pronounced 'SCON-ED'. These were published in 1993. We knew that with a name like 'Scouse Mouse' we may not get much interest from regional or national newspapers, so we devised a cunning ruse of renaming the strip and the character. We tried 'Ricky Rodent', 'Rocky Rat' and 'Mike Mouse'- which was when we realized 
it wasn't really going to work out. But we tried.
7 comments:
Nice set of strips Nigel. I remember the Scouse Mouse comic but I didn't know it had been a regional strip as well.
Wasn't it in some IPC comic? I didn't know it was you who drew them.
Yeah, he had his own comic which merged into Whizzer and Chips, which itself was swallowed up by Buster not long after. These newspaper strips are later than that, so Nigel wasn't involved in the comic.
Here is a Scouse Mouse strip from Whizzer and Chips in 1990...
Scouse Mouse
I caertainly was involved in Scouse Mouse comic(s) and his stay in Whizzer and Chips, as Idescribed on these pages:
http://nigelparkinsoncartoons.blogspot.co.uk/2010/11/shed-story-part-3.html, http://nigelparkinsoncartoons.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/back-to-shed-part-2.html
and the missing post is sort of back:http://nigelparkinsoncartoons.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/scouse-mouse-shed-again.html
I met Scouse Mouse in the Albert Dock, many years ago, and used to enjoy reading his strips (alongside Willie and Garfield) in the Echo every evening after school.
Had no idea it was by you!
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