robert raymond on flook

So I made it to the SLV at last today, actually managed to do some research in a 3-hour bloc of the almost empty Redmond Barry reading room. One thing I snuck into my order was Robert Raymond's Giving Luck a Chance, a cheerily written self-published (I think) memoir. Chapter 8 is called 'Flook to the Rescue'. In it he describes being down on his luck with a wife, a child and a lot of wet washing to contend with (I'm still confused about whether Candy and Vicki Raymond the actors are his children; going by this book I think they might not be, as Candy is mentioned but no Vicki, and if Vicki the actor was Candy the actor's sister, then Candy the actor might not be Robert Raymond the journalist's daughter... anyway...)

Chapter 8 is called 'Flook to the Rescue'. It's, well, I suppose some time in 1949, and Raymond is at the offices of the Daily Mirror hoping to pitch an idea for a series on 'trad bandleaders' to Ken Brown, who I guess is the editor, or an editor anyway. Brown doesn't want to pursue the idea (which had been his, Brown's, suggestion) but while there Raymond runs into Wally Fawkes, who is in a pickle:

'What do you make of this?' he said.

On the board was a strip cartoon divided into four frames. Drawn with an incisive pen in a spare yet sophisticated style, the first frame showed a large, well-dressed gentleman in a top hat climbing into a hansom cab in front of a stately Georgian town-house. The second frame showed two small characters standing on the pavement watching him - a schoolboy with an innocent gaze, and a funny little bear-like creature with a short trunk, large eyes and knowing expression. The third frame as a wide shot including all the characters, with the old gent learning out the carriage window and wagging  warning finger. The final frame showed him... addressing the young pair. Above his head was a speech balloon - empty. 

I recognised it as the new comic strip which Wally, under his pen name Trog, had recently begun drawing for the Daily Mail. It was called 'Rufus', and although I had not been following it I knew it was about a small boy, Rufus, who had met an odd little character named Flook in a dream, only to find his new friend beside his bed when he woke up next morning...

'Ever written the script for a strip?' Wally enquire casually.

'Can't say I have.'

'Want to have a go? It pays quite well. Seven guineas a week, probably.'

He immediately had all my attention.

'Who's doing it now?'

Wally gazed out the window.

'At this moment, nobody,' he said dreamily. 'A fellow in the advertising department, called Douglas Mount thought it up, after Rothermere came back from a trip to the States impressed by a strip over there about a boy called Barnaby who had a magical fairy godfather. Doug's been writing the story for the past couple of months, but he's had a nervous breakdown or something, and he's disappeared - gone to South America, I think.'

'Why don't you write it yourself?'

'Look, with Humph and the band two nights a week, and the odd concert, it takes me all my time to draw it, without worrying about the story. How about it?'

'I'll have a shot at it," I said, thinking of the seven guineas. 'Fill me in on where we are.'

'Well,' said Wally, 'the old boy is a rich philanthropist who finds Rufus and Flook wandering about London and persuades them to come and stay with them in his big house. He's very sad about something, and hopes they'll cheer him up.'

'What's he worried about?'

'I'm not sure,' admitted Wally.

'And where's he off to now? What's he telling them?'

Wally looked into the distance. 

'I haven't any idea. That's what I asked you up here for.'

'Oh well, I suppose we can come up with something,' I said uncertainly, and started towards the door. 'I'll have a think and give you a call next week.'

Wally turned and stared at me.

'I don't think you've got the idea. I've got to finish this strip now. They're waiting for it downstairs in the block room. (Pregnant pause.) It's in tomorrow's paper.'

There was a long silence. Before I could get a word out the phone on Wally's desk rang. He picked it up and listened, gazing at the wall.

'It'll be there,' he finally mumbled, and hung up. 'They've got to have it in half an hour. So what do I put in that last balloon?'

[...]

I tried to think of all the strips I had ever read. I knew that if I got the Mail out of this jam the scriptwriting job was mine. I paced up and down a few times.

'Right! Here's what we do. The old boy says: Make yourselves at home while I'm away, boys, but - '

The phone rang again.

'Leave the receiver off', said Wally, glancing at the clock and starting to letter the caption in the balloon. 'But what?'

'- BUT STAY OUT OF THE EAST WING!'

'Great!' said Wally, lettering rapidly. 'What's in the East Wing?'

'I haven't any idea,' I said, 'but give me a day or so and I'll think of something'. 

That story is told, by the way, on pp. 58-62. Obviously fifty years or however long later Raymond didn't have the actual strip in question to hand, and his recollection of it is wrong but it's more or less true in spirit (or, this is a redrawing done for the American run of the strip two years later). (I guess I'll find out when I get my hundred dollar Flook book in the mail someday). 

I think I also need to purchase these Robert Raymond memoirs. Intriguingly he mentions somewhere in there that he was the author of the main book mentioned by George Orwell in his 'Decline of the English Murder' essay. I have to get to the bottom of that because I think it must have been published under a pseudonym (he doesn't even list it in his bibliography, despite claiming in the text to be the author - ?!). (Maybe I misread it - maybe he just covered the case in the newspapers).