Bad Grandad invents a new language in Andy's quirky new strip

Andy Fanton has been tickling British and Australian funny bones for years with his chaotic cast of comic characters, and now his beloved mischief-maker Bad Grandad is back with a wheeze that will baffle linguists and delight schoolkids. In a fresh batch of strips hosted on Andy Fanton Dot Com, the doddery troublemaker decides the English language simply isn't up to the job and sets about cooking up his own. The result is a gleeful, scrappy, slightly rude vocabulary that captures everything mischievous about a grandad who refuses to behave.

Fans who grew up reading the Dandy comics will remember Bad Grandad as the sort of elder who hides the remote, eats the last biscuit, and blames the dog. Now he has taken to scribbling his own dictionary in pencil on the back of a tea-stained envelope, and the strips chart every absurd coinage as he rolls it out on an unsuspecting family. It is the kind of gentle, daft cartoon writing that suits a lazy Sunday arvo with a cuppa and the cat on your lap.

Meet the linguistic rebel

Bad Grandad has always been a character defined by stubbornness. Where other pensioners take up bowls or bowls of porridge, he takes umbrage. The strip leans into that energy: when he cannot find a word for that feeling when your toast lands butter-side down, he makes one up. Fanton has spoken about loving language as a playground, and that spirit runs through every gag in the new run of panels.

The grammar is, of course, entirely invented. Past tense is handled by adding "wob" to a word. Plurals involve an extra "g". A particularly grumpy mood gets its own dedicated suffix. The rules make no sense, which is exactly the point, and Andy draws the dictionary pages like the back of a school jotter covered in biro scribbles.

A long tradition of cartoon nonsense

Made-up languages have always been a rich seam for comedy. From the Muppets' Swedish Chef gibberish to the entire nation of Wales in certain English seaside postcards, cartoons have long understood that twisting words is one of the surest routes to a laugh. Fanton's work sits comfortably in that tradition, but with a distinctly British-northern-dry tone that has travelled remarkably well to Australian shores.

In Bad Grandad's case, the joke isn't only that the words are silly. It is that he deploys them with absolute conviction, lecturing his long-suffering daughter about the correct pronunciation of "splonkerated" while she stares into her tea. The humour lies in the gap between his certainty and the world's bewilderment.

A glossary worth keeping

Among the new vocabulary, a few choice entries have already become fan favourites. "Blunderbuss" is repurposed as a term of endearment for an incompetent friend. "Twiggle" means to change one's mind at the very last moment. "Muffinstomp" describes the act of sitting down heavily when you have forgotten there is a cat on the cushion. Each entry is illustrated with a tiny gag drawing in the margins, the way old joke books used to do.

Readers who want the full collection, including holiday-themed extensions of the project, can find them over at Bad Grandad invents a new holiday tips on the official site. The companion piece expands the idea into seasonal vocabulary, which is a lovely little Easter egg for anyone already hooked on the originals.

How the strip reaches Australian fans

Although The Dandy was a British publication, its humour has found a devoted readership across Australia, particularly among cartoonists and writers who appreciate Fanton's balance of wordplay and slapstick. Australian readers in Melbourne and Sydney often discover his work through second-hand comic anthologies, weekend markets like the Rosebery Trash and Treasure, or the local newsagency where old Dandy annuals occasionally surface.

Andy's digital home now brings the strips directly to Australian readers without the postal delay of waiting for an annual reprint. The site also links out to other corners of the comics world, including thoughtful commentary on visual storytelling at Pink Elephant Blog, which complements Fanton's own essays nicely. Together they form a little community of readers who like their humour dry and their drawings loose.

Try inventing your own language

Bad Grandad's method is actually surprisingly easy to copy. Pick a feeling you don't have a word for. Decide on a few simple rules, like doubling the first letter for emphasis or adding an animal suffix for past tense. Write a dozen entries. Draw a dictionary page. Before you know it you have got a private patois that only your household understands.

It is a brilliant little project for kids on a wet weekend in Brisbane or Perth, and grown-ups will find it just as satisfying. The rules of Australian classification treat the resulting comics as perfectly family-friendly, which means you can roll them out at the kitchen table without anyone reaching for the complaint form. And if your dictionary starts to take over the fridge, you might just be on the way to becoming a grandad yourself.

Want more absurd vocabulary, side-splitting gags, and the occasional medieval mash-up? Head over to Andy Fanton Dot Com and dive into the full archive of strips, including Carrotty Kid, Boo!, and the ever-unpredictable George vs Dragon. Subscribe to the updates, share your favourite Bad Grandad coinages in the comments, and keep an eye out for the next instalment, because Fanton's pencil is never still for long.