I’m working at a London school at present, and in my tea break I happened to thumb through a copy of a Beano annual that was languishing, coverless and dog-eared on a shelf in the media studies room.
My favourite Beano character has always been Calamity James, written and drawn by the great Tom Paterson, largely because unlike most of the rest of the Beano, it was actually funny.
In one panel Calamity James’s sidekick Alexander Lemming is reading a newspaper called The Daily Farce. The headline is “SPACE ALIENS KEPT ME IN A JAM JAR AND LAUGHED AT MY CARDIGAN”.
Could this have been the inspiration behind the infamous game?