Sunday Funnies

Bella at the Bar- never heard of this before:

Bella, originally titled Bella at the Bar, began as an ordinary serial and ended as arguably Tammy’s most popular and beloved character. Going on from an ordinary serial to endure for ten whole years, Bella Barlow holds a joint record with maidservant Molly Mills (q.v.) for the longest-running character in Tammy.

Bella Barlow was the product of a flourish of gymnastics stories in girls’ comics in the wake of Olga Korbut and Nadia Comaneci. Before Bella, Tammy had only one gymnastics story, Amanda Must not be Expelled (1972). But when Korbut and Comaneci made gymnastics the favourite sport for girls, girls’ comics wasted no time in jumping on the bandwagon. In Bunty, Josie the Gymnast scored top marks with readers while Tammy’s answer to Olga Korbut was Bella Barlow!

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Whenever Bella finds the opportunity, she indulges in the one thingshe has in life – gymnastics and working out on the makeshift apparatus she has installed in the back yard. The Barlows disapprove of her “monkey tricks” – except when they find a way to make money from it. Bella starts making headway when she finds proper coaches but still faces obstacles from the Barlows and other people. But of course everything ends happily when Bella saves a man’s life. He happens to be the Soviet ambassador, and he rewards her with a scholarship at a top Soviet gymnastics school.