Demobilized in 1946, Smythe returned to Hartlepool, but, unable to find work, he soon left for London. There, after an extended period of unemployment, he found a job at the General Post Office in 1950. He also married Vera Whittaker. Andy is a working-class figure who never actually works, living in Hartlepool, a harbour town in County Durham, in North East England. The title of the strip is a pun on the local pronunciation of "handicap"; and the surname Capp signifies how Andy's cap always covered his eyes along with, metaphorically, his vision in life. Handicap racing and handicapping, in sport and games, is part of betting, a favourite activity of Andy Capp. ASKED ONCE about what he thinks the appeal of his strip is, Smythe quoted a college professor, who said the strip was “beautifully observed.” Victor E. Neuburg (1983). The Popular Press Companion to Popular Literature. Popular Press. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-0-87972-233-3.

Their furniture has been repossessed on several occasions. Somehow they always manage to retrieve it, and Andy is always able to afford beer and gambling money, usually by borrowing from Florrie. At some time during the night,” Smythe said, quoted by Lilley, “I did a drawing of my temporary character, and I tried to find a name for him over breakfast. I was due to present something to Bill Herbert that morning! Smythe deliberately didn’t give the Capps children. In childless marriages, he believes, the man becomes the child, and the woman, the mother. Andy's and Flo's best friends are their neighbours Chalkie and Rube White. Chalkie is a hard-drinking working-class type like Andy, who can often be seen sharing a pint with him at the corner pub, but Chalkie seems mellower than Andy, and more tolerant of his wife. Rube is Flo's confidante, and the two often trade gossip over the clothesline about their husbands' latest escapades. The local vicar is also often seen. Andy despairs of his holier-than-thou attitude, as he is constantly criticising Andy for his many bad habits and vice-ridden lifestyle. He often lets his opinion be known to Flo, who agrees with his low assessment of Andy's character.

But Bill liked the ideas and showed them to Hugh Cudlip. Mr. Cudlip also liked the idea and almost immediately started it off in the northern editions of the Mirror.” Smythe grew up in Northern England under conditions that made Andy Capp seem like a kindred soul if not an alter ego. “He was my best friend yet,” Smythe once said. Growing into manhood, Smythe was often jobless for long stretches, making him sympathetic to Andy’s situation (which, in Andy’s case, is self-inflicted by preference). When I’d finished the poster, one of the group said, ‘Hey, that’s not bad! Why don’t you take up commercial art for a living?’ After thinking about it,” said Smythe, quoted in The World, “I thought it a very good suggestion.”

Once I cottoned on to this facet of the strip,” he said, “about Andy being the child and Florrie being the mother — I started to draw her in a more buxom and motherly way. I also made Andy a little smaller. I did this deliberately and after a lot of thought. It works more easily for me when the pair look like mother and child. I think I’m right. Andy would be a totally unlikeable brute if he and Florrie had children to look after.”

And his popularity eventually spread to American shores. In 1963, Andy Capp was running in the now defunct Majorca Daily News, where a vacationing American newspaperman saw it and liked it. The newspaperman was Bob Hall, head of Publishers Syndicate. He went to London on his way home and got syndication rights for the American market. Starting September 16, 1963, Andy Capp was distributed in the U.S. by Hall’s syndicate. The hilariously workshy northerner from Hartlepool, often seen stumbling home late from the pub, also inspired a West End musical, a TV series starring Likely Lads actor James Bolam and a stage play with Tim Healy. With his boozy exploits, cheeky humour and expert job dodging, flat-capped legend Andy Capp has been entertaining millions of readers since the 50s. The GPO work was boring, and he looked for distractions in various extracurricular enterprises that the GPO offered. There were sports groups and drama groups, and he “attached himself to the outer edges of one of the drama groups,” writes Les Lilley in The World of Andy Capp.

And Smythe’s father was known to wear a cloth cap. “Even when he played football!” his son claimed. “But on Sundays he would show respect and put on a bowler hat to be posh.” If you take the time to make a study of my characters,” he says, “the character that is nicest and best is Florrie. Why, therefore, am I never accused of being a feminist? She is my creation as well, isn’t she?” In the U.S., Andy Capp appeared in only forty-five papers the first year; in the second, the strip took off, appearing in over 400 newspapers. By the 1990s, it was in nearly a thousand U.S. papers a day. When Smythe died of lung cancer June 13, 1998, Andy Capp was in 1,700 newspapers in fifty-two countries, translated into fourteen languages—proving that a drunken layabout is unaccountably popular everywhere.This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sourcesin this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. ( August 2016) ( Learn how and when to remove this template message) a b Leatherdale, Duncan (23 March 2016). "The mirth and misogyny of Andy Capp". BBC Online . Retrieved 23 March 2016. To Americans, judging by the values they say they live by, Andy Capp represents everything they are taught from infancy to eschew energetically wherever possible. He’s an anti-role model. Yet despite his wholly unsavory behavior, he was immediately hugely popular in this country—a roaring success. Perhaps because readers saw him as “getting away with it”—with everything we’re all taught we shouldn’t do. On November 29, 2016 while at the Labour Exchange Andy is overjoyed when he finally found and signed up for his dream occupation-Sample beer taster of ales at local brewery; unfortunately for Andy the Brewery makes non-alcoholic ales! The miracles,” he elaborated, “were there to get attention. Nobody would’ve taken notice of Jesus Christ had he been an ordinary fellow and not performed his miracles. He cured a blind man—just like that! That’s the sort of thing that attracts attention and gets people interested. And it’s the same with Andy Capp. He attracts your attention with his boozing and all that.