THE GAMBOLS

THE GAMBOLS

The GAMBOLS have always been my favourite cartoon strip but I have never found anything like a web site dedicated to them, although I did find a nice comic book site that showed the covers and issue dates of all the volumes, but unfortunately no longer seems to exist.

They first made an appearance in The Daily Express in 1950, becoming a regular feature a year later.

Book number 1 featured above was issued in June 1952. I managed to pick this up on E-Bay a couple of years back.

Cartoonist Barry Appleby and his wife Dobs created the characters of George and Gaye and wanted a surname to sum them up. Early cartoons showed them at Football Matches and many Race Meetings and the name "Gambol" was thought up by Dobs Appleby in the middle of the night. The name stuck.

George and Gaye Gambol were just a normal suburban married couple. Gaye always had a passion for new clothes and hats and was always one step ahead of the latest fashion. George was always the breadwinner until later years when Gaye started taking secretarial jobs.

We were introduced to Flivver in the first book. He was George and Gaye's Nephew. Miggy, their Niece, was introduced in book 2. Flivver and Miggy were Cousins and not Brother and Sister.

The second book appeared in 1955 and was again a similar small volume before the more standard size appeared with volume 3.

The main characters through the years

GAYE GAMBOL

1952 1958 1966 1979 1988 1996 2000

GEORGE GAMBOL

1952 1958 1966 1979 1988 1996 2000

FLIVVER and MIGGY

This is how Flivver looked in 1952. Subsequent pictures show Flivver and Miggy together through the years.

1958 1966 1979 1988 1996 2000

The biggest change in drawing came in 1996. Barry Appleby died in March of that year and the strip was taken over by his friend and fellow cartoonist Roger Mahoney. Unfortunately, in 2000, the annuals came to an end thus ending 50 years of The Gambols.

All in all 48 annuals were published. How sad they never reached their Golden Anniversary annual.

Since the comic book site with all the covers has packed up, I have great pleasure in sharing the annual covers with you. Books 1 and 2 are above, here are the covers for books 3 - 48. Click on the thumbnail to open the bigger picture.

Book 3