Ball Boy is a character who appears in his own comic strip in the UK comic The Beano. It first appeared in issue 1735, dated 18 October 1975. It features a five-a-side football team (who usually lose all their matches, often 37-0 in some cases) that includes:
- Ball Boy - the captain of the team, Ball Boy is obsessed with football and uses the game as his reference point in almost every situation. He plays striker for the team. He has a minor part in The Beano Interactive DVD, playing football with a globe in a geography lesson.
- Titch - A small boy who (ironically considering his height) usually plays in defence. Little is known of Titch, although he is given his own short strip in The Beano Book 2002
- Dimmy - Similar to Smiffy from the Bash Street Kids, Dimmy is the team's defender. He looks a lot like Plug.
- Benjy - He is a good player on the team, Benjy seems to be assistant captain and Ball Boy's best friend.
- Goalie - the goalkeeper. This character is an anomaly in the sense that in some strips he is a superb goalkeeper and in others he is comically awful, letting in everything. There are a few strips where he just sits in the corner of the goal, reading, because the rest of the team can't get a shot on target.
The comic strip and the title character in particular have several similarities with Owen Goal, another football-obsessed character who starred in his own strip in The Dandy.
Some strips have also shown unnamed characters playing for the team. On other occasions, the team has had guest players joining them for one story, like Bea, or Gnasher. The team sometimes also have other players featured, including a recurring black player called Elvis. Paul Gascoigne made a guest appearance in the strip in 1993 in issue 2648 (dated 17th April 1993), when in order to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Roger the Dodger's first appearance in The Beano Roger appeared in every strip in that week's comic and arranged for Gascoigne to sign up for Ball Boy's team.
Ball Boy and his team have both been at two World Cups. The first occasion was in Italy for the 1990 World Cup, which featured in The Beano Book 1990, and a long running strip in the comic during the 1998 finals featuring the team around France.
The strip was drawn by Malcolm Judge until his death in 1989. John Dallas took over from him afterwards, and drew it until his retirement in April 2003. Since then, the artist has been Dave Eastbury. Nigel Parkinson and Tom Paterson have both occasionally drawn the strip as well.
In early strips Ball Boy's team usually wore a kit with black and white vertical stripes along the shirt and black shorts, but when the strip started to be published in colour the shirts changed to red and black vertical stripes. Another change occurred in March 2007, which was explained in the comic itself. Ball Boy's Mum accidentally washed the team's red and black kit with a blue garment, and it dyed the red stripes dark blue! However, the rest of the team were happy as they had been complaining they needed new kits and believed Ball Boy had got them a new kit, he didn't admit what had actually happened.
For issue 3260, dated 8 January 2005, the Ball Boy strip was meant to feature a French footballer called Henry Thierry who wore a red shirt. In the strip he is shown a red card and then runs from the team bath when a snorkel appears close to him saying "Time to va-va-voom" - a reference to the Renault adverts in which Thierry Henry appears. Beano editor Euan Kerr decided to destroy the entire print run of that comic so as not to risk the Arsenal striker's wrath, the issue eventually going on sale with a different Ball Boy strip in its place.
Ball Boy also featured in The Beano's sister comic BeanoMAX in the black and blue vertical striped kit, drawn by Nigel Parkinson. Strangely, however, Ball Boy did not appear in The Beano Annual 2009 despite being a regular in the comic during the time period when the annual was being prepared. It is not known why he is absent from this edition of the annual.
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