Missing space before “and” in author list with two \thanks

Question

I am trying to typeset the authors' names in a paper so that they appear as

Joe Bloggs* and John Smith**

(i.e. typeset with a joining "and" and normal spacing between words). I also need to put a \thanks for each author. The code I am using is

\author{
  Joe Bloggs\thanks{blah}\ and\ John Smith\thanks{blah}
}

But this has the downside that there is no space between the footnote symbol on "Bloggs" and "and" so what i get looks like this:

Does anyone know how to get LaTeX to put a space in there?

Minimum working example:

\documentclass{article}
\title{The Title}
\author{Joe Bloggs\thanks{blah}\ and\ John Smith\thanks{blah}}
\begin{document}
\maketitle
\end{document}

Answer 1

The proper way is to redefine \and and use it. Anyways, the footnotemark is printed \rlapped in the \author, i.e. occupying no space. If we disable \rlap, everything works fine.

The "proper" code:

\documentclass{article}

\renewcommand\and{\end{tabular}\kern-\tabcolsep\ and\ \kern-\tabcolsep\begin{tabular}[t]{c}}
\let\origthanks\thanks
\renewcommand\thanks[1]{\begingroup\let\rlap\relax\origthanks{#1}\endgroup}

\title{The Title}
\author{Joe Bloggs\thanks{blah} \and John Smith\thanks{blah}}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
\end{document}

The code that only disables \rlap and does not modify anything else:

\documentclass{article}

\let\origthanks\thanks
\renewcommand\thanks[1]{\begingroup\let\rlap\relax\origthanks{#1}\endgroup}

\title{The Title}
\author{Joe Bloggs\thanks{blah}\ and\ John Smith\thanks{blah}}

\begin{document}
\maketitle
\end{document}

The output of both codes is exactly the same.