#24feb

I had to answer your ask today! Happy George’s Birthday, day one! 

George, being a creature of duality throughout his life, just had to have two birthdays! Here’s George’s birth certificate - George’s birth was registered on the 26th February 1943 by his father, Harold Hargreaves Harrison, who said he picked George’s name on his way to the register office, because, “if it was good enough for the king, it was good enough for him”! As you can see, it gives George’s birth date as the 25th February. 

However, sometime in his forties, in the 1980s, George discovered he’d actually been born on the 24th of February at 11.42pm. (I’m not sure how he found this out!) So George ended up with 2 birthdays, because he’s just that special. 

There’s a cute story from Olivia where she says if you said happy birthday to George on the 24th, he would say, “oh, my birthday isn’t until tomorrow’, so when you said happy birthday to him on the 25th, he’d reply, ‘oh, sorry, you missed it - my birthday was yesterday!”

(Note: George’s sister, Louise, who was present at George’s birth, says he was born after midnight. However, she would have only been about 12 years old, so…)

Happy Birthday George! 

Warlord and Bullet No 231, dated 24 February 1979. The Fighting Flat Top cover by Jeff Bevan. The plane shown is a Fairey Barracuda.

Details of another free gift on the back page with art by Ian Kennedy.

A 1979 ad for 2000AD and Starlord prog 101. "Charlie walks into a trap!" from my favourite Ro-busters story while the classic Mike McMahon Dredd cover from prog 61 gets another outing.

The Crunch No. 6, dated 24 February 1979. Arena cover art by Enrique Alcatena which came from an interior panel.

Below is an ad for the issue that ran in other DC Thomson titles.

The Beatles filming the cycling scenes for Help! in the Bahamas on 24th February 1965. On this day, George had his first significant brush with the philosophy which would shape the rest of his life. 

“I suppose that was the start of it all for me. It was a chance meeting - the guy had a little place on Paradise Island, and somebody just have whispered in his inner ear to give us his book, The Illustrated Book of Yoga. We were on our bikes on the road, waiting to do a shoot, when up walked a swami in orange robes: Swami Vishnu Devananda, the foremost hatha yoga exponent. It was on my birthday.”

[George]

As I was putting this post together, I only just realised this happened on George’s birthday which seems quite cosmically serendipitous (and maybe other forces are at play!) In the quote above, I’m not sure which of George’s birthdays he’s referring to. It’s from the Anthology so it’s after George discovered he had two(!) As far as I can tell from my research the Beatles filmed the cycling scenes on the 24th and not the 25th (George’s actual birthday, but not his official one), although its possible they were filmed over the two days. 

Either way, doesn’t it feel like destiny?