I really enjoy the Sunday format. Shame it takes so damn long to colour them up.

In fact Ollie got his name from an ankle ring he had put on him as a young chick. When he looked down at it (ie. upside down) the number 31770 looked like OLLIE to him.

My thanks to Brendan Burford at King Features for his input here. I had Ollie put the earpiece in Quentin's mouth. It's only when we discussed maybe distorting Quentin's speech that it occurred to me that it would sound funnier if his nose was blocked.

Apologies to Teresa's uncle Keith and all very exciting uncle Keiths out there.

Seagulls are hooligans! I'm surprised it's taken me this long to come up with a strip like this. It's so obvious. If ever you visit coastal towns you'll see seagulls attacking tourists for their chips.

I originally drew this with Quentin telling the story but something wasn't right. I think I have to be careful about how "human" Lugworms can be. Somehow a gull having a tummy tuck seems more believable than a worm whose body is simply too different to ours.

I've been thinking about using the frame gutters for a while. I had meant it to be where the ghost of Quentin's boring Uncle Keith is stuck. Maybe Quentin and Ollie would use a ouija board to summon him? Boring uncle Keith could talk for an eternity so this gutter is pergatory for him 'cos he can't get a word in edgeways. Thing is I couldn't get it right and this one just leapt into my head a couple of hours before I had to show King Features what I'd done this week. Amazing what a bit of blind panic will do.

Quentin: "Rory's made a mess on the carpet".
Ollie: "Well Rory can clean it up".
Quentin: "Rory IS the mess on the carpet".

Well, at some point I had to do a bird poo joke.

Well I finally got a ventriloquist joke out (see previous). Gottle o' Geer anyone?

This is unusually cruel.

Hmm, might be a problem with the name "FlopFlip". Could be inviting trouble having the word 'flop' in the title. Not too upset about changing it again. Perhaps I should simply use the character's names as previous. Didn't do Calvin and Hobbes any harm. Either "Quentin and Ollie" or "Nobby, Ollie and Quentin Too". Quentin and Ollie looks nicer. As Esme, my daughter, says it might help me remember Ollie's name for once.

Hang on... it should be Ollie and Quentin! Dammit, I'm gonna have to redo that logo again!

I could have filled in the first two of Quentin's speech bubbles here and just left the final one blank but I couldn't resist it. When I drew this up I did put all of Quentin's words in just so the speech bubbles were the right size.

Guess what he said in frame 4. I felt like a naughty schoolboy using such foul language in a cartoon strip.

This is one of those rare occasions that we see Ollie and Quentin interacting with the outside world. It won't happen that often.

I know this is absurd but Quentin is new to the outside world so everything is a bit confusing. This is how I explain this ridiculous joke. It'll be the first Sunday strip.

Unfortunately I can't use "butt" in the states. It has to be the lame "rear end"...yawn. Shame 'cos it ruins the flow of one of my favourite strips. Here it is as it should be.

Ollie and Quentin's neighbour is called the 'Evil Mrs. Cadaver'. We'll never see her.

Jay Kennedy

Very sad news. Jay Kennedy, Editor-in-Chief at King Features Syndicate has died whilst on holiday. My condolences to his family and friends at Kings.

Ollie's a Seagull but he spends next to no time on the sea. Sofa gull, TV Gull, Fridge Gull?

Again, this would have been difficult to fit into 4 frames.