In the early days I liked the idea that Canned Laughter was a well-established comic and we were just joining it well into its run. This led to a lot of self-referential jokes that I thought were so clever at the time.
The final panel was a reference to the Paul Holmes 'cheeky darkie' scandal, which, unbelievably, was actually a current issue when I wrote this (my god, it feels like an eternity ago). I did worry a bit that the irony would be missed and people would think that I was just being racist.
When I showed this to the editor of Critic he asked "Are all your comics going to be racially themed?" Awkward! I hadn't even realised that the first two strips I had submitted had that in common, and it definitely wasn't supposed to be that kind of comic. And so, I never attempted social commentary again.
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