Smarty Pants and Tatty Ed
    
                             
    Smarty Pants was always dressed impeccably. He liked
    to think he had an air of refinement about him. But really,
    he was just a snooty snob.

    Tatty Ed, meanwhile, lived life on a shoestring. He was
    always scuffed with dirt and grime and his air was somewhat
    less rarified - A fact which got right up the nose of old
    Smarty Pants and led to no end of ongoing friction...

    Yes, folks, this was another classic Have It All / Have Not
    Fleetway strip featuring two buffoons at loggerheads with
    each other. In this case, Smarty and Tatty were unfortunate
    neighbours who had to face each other every day, over
    the garden fence. Smarty's parents had a lovely posh house
    and landscaped garden, whilst Tatty's good barely keep
    their old shack together. As always, we were meant to side
    with the loser more than his over-bearing counterpart, but in
    reality, neither fellow was particularly admirable. Unlike say,
    poor Tony Broke, Tatty seemed to revel in his dirt and
    dishevellment, which is fine if you're having a kick-about
    at the local park. But it's not particularly endearing, or
    hygenic, at the dinner table...

    Comedy winners

    Smarty and Tatty were originally included in a "Comedy
    Choice" line-up, which ran in "Whizzer & Chips" in the
    Spring of 1975. Ten new strips were previewed (one each
    week for ten weeks), and readers cast their votes for their
    preferred new toon. The results were published in the comic
    on the 31st May, and Smarty and Tatty topped the list with
    1136 votes. They entered the "Whizzer" section on a
    permanent basis from the issue dated 28th June, replacing
    the dueling families of "Beat Your Neighbour".
    
    Incidentally, the runner-up in the voting was Lucky Dick,
    and he really did strike it lucky, because Fleetway HQ
    decided he could become a regular strip star too!

    As for smarty and Tatty, well, these two fought and scrapped
    through the weekly pages until, in around May 1976, they
    met up with stablemates "Toffs and the Toughs" and gave
    birth to a tremendously over-titled new strip. Take a deep
    breathe now:

    "Smarty Pants and Tatty Ed
    meet The Toffs and The Toughs"

    What a mouthful of a title!

    The Fleetway folk obviously never learnt their lesson from
    this, because they repeated the title-twisting silliness
    six years later.

    As for Smarty and Tatty, they may not have hung around
    all that long, but artist Jim Crocker went to town on the strips,
    and added lots of little animal folk in the panels - dogs and
    mice who would gawp and giggle at the antics of the stars.
    And it's made the strips all the more memorable...