Re-live the joy that was 2016 via topical cartoons

It's time for my traditional look back at the past 12 months via the medium of topical cartoons. And it's 2016 ... what a year to look back on! 

We begin in space, where British astronaut Tim Peake started the year. But he seemed to spend rather a lot of time on his phone, tweeting ...

There were new "nanny state" guidelines on alcohol limits ...

Over-sensitive university students continued to baffle and annoy in equal measure ...

The crime trial of the year could become a film, we were told ...

The EU referendum dominated the news ...

Then came the shock result ...

Amid all this, there was only really one "silly season" story, Pokemon Go ...

And a little good news with the Olympics...

But there were problems amid the Opposition (again) ...

And I've not even mentioned the endless parade of high-profile deaths in this year ...

And then, as if all that wasn't bad enough ...

2016 was a year in which how terrible and relentless the news was became news itself ...

Who knows what 2017 will bring? Have a happy new year, but remember ...

Cartoon advent calendar:Day 17. Glory days

Here's another oldie that still feels quite topical, as there is a fair bit of looking back to the glory days of the summer as we approach the end of the year (and the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, announced last night, was dominated by Olympics athletes). This was in the Christmas issue of Reader's Digest last year.

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Cartoon advent calendar: Day 24.It's the taking part

Here's the final advent calendar cartoon. This was my Christmas card this year, and like the drawing from day one, the gag was in the Christmas issue of Reader's Digest.

I picked this as the final one as it looks forward to 2012. Thanks for reading and a merry Christmas and a happy new year to you all!

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Cycling cartoon: An Olympian effort

Here's a sneak peek at one of the cartoons I have submitted for exhibition at the Shrewsbury International Cartoon Festival 2011, which takes place in April.

The theme is Olympian Sports, and this is a new version of a cartoon I drew for the Kent Messenger when the Tour de France came through the county in 2007. This version is coloured using Faber-Castell Pitt brush pens, for those that care about that sort of thing.

It was a bit of an Olympian effort coming up with four cartoons on a sporting theme, as it's not a subject I turn to a lot, to say the least. This year I'll also be drawing a Big Board cartoon in Shrewsbury market square, so I need to think of another gag too. That one won't have bicycles in it though. I hate drawing bicycles.

The theme may appear to be a year early, as the London Olympics are in 2012, but it is in fact a tie-in with the Shropshire Olympian Festival, which takes place in June, and the Wenlock Olympian Games, also in Shropshire, in July.

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From the archives: Olympics cartoon

"Behind schedule? Not at all. Over here we have the sandpit, the high-jump, hurdles ..."

This was drawn for a business magazine in 2004, shortly before the Athens Games, when the media was going crazy about how the building work was behind schedule etc. No doubt I'll get to recycle this joke for the London 2012 Games!

This six-year-old cartoon looks a little stiff and clunky to me now. It was drawn before I started using brush pens, but I can see the beginnings of my current style coming through. It was also one of the first cartoons I coloured using Adobe Photoshop, although by the look of it I was mainly just using the "fill" tool at this point.

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