responding to my series of posts on 'them funny Professors' and more specifically commenting on Prof Bean's quotation from Sigmund Freud the other day, my father emailed me the following message:

Looking at your recent blog featuring Prof Bean and his lecture on Freud, I was reminded of Ken Dodd addressing his audience on the care of what he termed the "chuckle muscles". He quoted for them the famous man's pronouncement that "Laughter is the conservation of psychic energy." and then, after a moment's reflection, declared "Mind you, Freud never played second house Saturday night at the Glasgow Empire!"

My father is also named Eddie Campbell and I undoubtedly got my sense of humour from him. I was on a visit home once, when I was unemployed and obscure. I found that a young artist was briefly interviewed in one of the rock music magazines and mentioned me as an influence in a phrase carefully crafted for its effect in that it also included Shakespeare and Boy George. Naturally I read it aloud. My late auntie Ella, also visiting, and not quite getting the early '80s zeitgeist with respect to how a chap in second hand clothes partly held together with sticky tape could be a source of influence to another, said, "To be mentioned along with these famous show people, it must be some other Eddie Campbell they're talking about." My father, sitting in his big armchair reading his paper, muttered "Obviously it's me."

There were five of these Professor Bean cartoons, and they appeared in print more than once. But every time an editor wanted them he only wanted four pages, and i shuffled them so that each time it was a different selsction, but all five were never seen together. Admittedly this was twenty three years ago and I may be misremembering.


Here is the cover from one of those early appearances: