Prospect Cartoonist of the month

“Sure, I came up with fire, and the wheel, but you’re only as good as your last idea.”

Hop over to the Prospect blog if you've got a few minutes, as I am Cartoonist of the month for April. Woo-hoo!

Royston's portfolio website

Another cartoonist called Royston: Update

When I found out last week that there was another cartoonist called Royston, working in Australia in the 1940s, I knew I would need to uncover more about my namesake.

After numerous emails to cartoonists in the UK and Australia, primarily John Jensen and Lindsay Foyle, consultations in reference books on artists, and a fair bit of poking around in dusty corners of the internet, I found out a lot more. And here’s the headline news: Royston was a woman!

“Royston” was the pen-name of Victoria Ethel Cowdroy, better known as Vic Cowdroy, an Australian cartoonist, painter, sculptor, illustrator, filmmaker and commercial artist. I feel like a bit of an underachiever compared to this Royston.


A poster I found in an online auction, credited as the work of Vic Cowdroy, circa 1965. Intriguingly, it is signed “Royston Cooper”.

Cowdroy was born in 1908 and moved to London after the Second World War. She married cartoonist Arthur Horner, creator of the strip Colonel Pewter. They lived and worked in Britain until the mid-1970s when they returned to Melbourne. She died on 26 June 1994.


From The Age, Melbourne, Dec 31, 1977. Note the reference to Horner working on a Colonel Pewter film with his wife.

You can find out all you need to know about Vic Cowdroy here. The article states: “From January 1938 Cowdroy contributed numerous joke cartoons and elegant line and watercolour drawings to Man, Man Junior, Cavalcade and other semi-salacious publications under the pseudonym ‘Royston’.”

I couldn’t find any more "Royston" cartoons online (if you have any, please do scan them and send them to me) but this piece does contain some very entertaining transcriptions of her Man cartoons, which were more than a little risqué for the time.

Old woman to young woman going out: “Be a good girl and have a good time.”/ “Make up your mind mother.” November 1938

Young woman to customs officer checking her luggage: "Oh, don't worry with that one. It's only some marihuana I'm smuggling in." December 1938

Woman with knickers round her ankles but hat intact: “Huh! I thought you said this stuff would knock your hat off.” January 1939

So, lots of information uncovered on Victoria Cowdroy, but one mystery remains: Why earth did she chose the name Royston?!

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Many thanks to cartoonist John Jensen for being the first to tip me off that "Royston" was a woman. John's father was Jack Gibson, one of the key artists at Man, and John met Vic Cowdroy a few times.

Thanks also and to Lindsay Foyle in Australia for a heroic amount of research, finding out info from colleagues and looking Cowdroy up in reference books on Australian art. And cheers to Matt Buck, Andy Davey, Jason Chatfield and Nik Scott.

And this is me! THIS Royston's portfolio site

Cat and dog cartoons

Over the years I have done many cartoons on the subject of cats and dogs, including the one above which was in Private Eye in 2004. So when I came to do a revamp of my portfolio site recently I decided to create a gallery exclusively consisting of cat and dog cartoons from various publications, for all you pet lovers out there.

Here it is: Cat and Dog Cartoons. Enjoy (I hope no one's allergic?).

News media cartoon: More relevant than ever

Here's another cartoon from the archives. A ten-year-old gag from Private Eye (26 June, 1998) that is probably more relevant now than ever. TV news was just getting going on dumbing down back then.

This is another pre-Google Image Search cartoon. I drew Sooty from memory and knew at the time that he didn't look quite right. When the cartoon appeared in print I saw what was wrong ... his ears were white! So when I put together my first portfolio website, a year later, I put up a version with black ears.

The cartoon made a reappearance in the Private Eye annual of 1998 (with white ears). It was also one of the first cartoons where I sold the original. A friend snapped it up for a sum that was cheap even for 1998 (hope you realise you got a bargain, Simon!)

Royston's portfolio website

One from the archives: My oldest drawing

For this journey into the past we're going back a l-o-n-g way, to the oldest drawing of mine that I still own. It was drawn when I was ten years old.

Clearly it was kept (by my mum) as it's an "award-winning" cartoon: Third Prize in the Schools Painting Competition run by the Catterick and District Caged Bird Society. Oh, yes. Here's the proof:



It was not intended as a cartoon as such, but I think the drawing betrays a cartoonist's sensibility ...



Yes, that's right, I drew a dodo for the Caged Bird Society! I remember being slightly obsessed with the extinct bird as a kid. Not sure why. I love the fact that the certificate just says "His painting of a bird". It's not even a painting as it's drawn with coloured pencils. I also like the fact that the dodo looks pretty evil.

I did draw cartoons before this. I made my own comic when I was about eight or nine called "Ka-Pow!" I used to draw it with carbon paper underneath and an extra sheet of paper so I'd have a copy for my friend Richard. I've no idea what happened to the comics, so my strips "Gomez the Gorilla" and "Toot and Carmen" are sadly not available to be shown here.

That's probably a good thing, on reflection.

Some more up-to-date cartoons by Royston

Arts and culture cartoon: The waiting game

Sometimes you have to wait quite some time before a cartoon which is taken by a magazine actually appears in its pages. The above cartoon is a case in point. It appears in the current issue of The Spectator. My records show that it was part of a batch of cartoons sent to the magazine on May 8th, 2007. So it has taken 13 months to see the light of day.

I've found, from talking to other cartoonists, that this is not unusual. Some have horror stories of even longer delays. My own personal record is the cartoon below which appeared in the New Statesman in early 2001, two years after they took it.

By the way, Newsnight Review, for those not familiar with it, is a BBC2 arts show that is screened on a Friday night after the regular Newsnight show. It's always good for a laugh as some of the comments of the participants can be a bit on the pretentious side. It's particularly amusing when discussing stuff that isn't generally what you'd call high-brow. For example the poet and critic Tom Paulin seems to say about more or less any Hollywood film, "Essentially, I think, the subtext here is Vietnam."

Kids, on the other hand, have two default settings when it comes to "reviewing" films and TV. As a parent I'm acutely aware that everything is "cool" or "boring". They should hand Newsnight Review over to the kids for one show. They'd get through a lot of stuff.

***UPDATE July 4, 2008***
Unbelievably, the "Newsnight Review for Kids" cartoon has come true! This week they brought in a panel of kids, rather than the usual pundits, to discuss the stage version of High School Musical. The words "like" and "cheesy" were heard a lot more than usual. Here it is: The REAL Newsnight Review for Kids.

Royston's portfolio website

Caricatured by Steve Bright

This caricature of me was drawn by my cartoonist pal Steve Bright. It was kind of an exercise in no-holds-barred caricaturing. I'm pretty sure Steve isn't quite so cruel when at live caricaturing gigs, or he'd never get asked back. But I'm not (too) vain, I love it! And it's now on my wall, as well as my blog.

Steve cut his teeth at the Beano and Dandy and was co-creator of Bananaman (he also kindly drew a Bananaman for my son). He's a superb draughtsman and to see him draw live is a joy. Check out his website Steve Bright Cartoons.

The egg-shaker, by the way, is a reference to my "musical" exploits at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival.

Royston's portfolio website

Recycling cartoon: Climate change is such a laugh

I "do my bit", as they say, in terms of recycling, composting, re-using stuff, using public transport, etc, and I certainly believe that climate change is a problem ... yet I find that it's so much easier to make jokes about "Green enthusiasts" than about the climate-change deniers. Above is an example, which appears in this week's Private Eye.

I read an article in the Guardian last week about whether it's possible for comedians to do jokes supporting environmentalism, or whether they just end up sounding preachy. I've certainly seen the latter with some comedians who have tackled the issue. But maybe I'm just being lazy and should attempt some pro-environmentalism gags. Watch this space.

Appropriately, the joke in this cartoon was originally written for a commission but it was rejected by the client in favour of another option. So I "recycled" the joke by drawing it as a cartoon to go out with an on-spec batch.

Royston's portfolio website

Review: Pont at the Cartoon Museum

I wrote a review of the exhibition Pont: Observing the British at Home and Abroad, which is at the Cartoon Museum in London, for the Professional Cartoonists' Organisation blog. Here it is:

It's probably asking for trouble to use the word "important" in relation to a cartoon exhibition, but it seems applicable here as Pont, who was known as Graham Laidler to his mum, is so often overlooked when histories of cartooning are written.

Also, these cartoons from the 1930s were clearly instrumental in helping to create the magazine cartoon as we know it today. And a tribute to their worth is the fact that so many are laugh-out-loud funny, even now.

Pont's The British Character cartoons, which appeared in Punch and make up a large chunk of the show, still seem to hit the nail on the head. Even the captions in themselves are funny: "Fondness for laughing at our own anecdotes"; "Passion for not forgetting the moderately great"; and, my particular favourite, "A tendency to leave the washing-up till later".

The drawings demand your attention, and repay you with lots of brilliant details. Look at that impatient left foot in the drawing above! In "Life in the Flat Above", part of the Popular Misconceptions series, we see every member of the family jumping up and down on the floor and clanging pots, but look closer and you see that figures in the paintings on the walls, including an elephant, are also jumping.

Laidler died at 32, a tragically short life, but what a groundbreaking legacy he left. The cartoon above looks like a 1930s precursor to the melancholy of Charles Schulz's Peanuts.

So it's an important show, but it's mostly just very, very funny. The exhibition, which includes a comprehensive and reasonably priced catalogue, is at the Cartoon Museum until July 27. Go and see it.

The Cartoon Museum website

The Professional Cartoonists' Organisation

Dinner party cartoon: Let's change the subject

Here's a cartoon from May's Reader's Digest. Needless to say, this is based on experience. Why do people love talking about these subjects so much, particularly houses? I own a house, not thinking of moving, or buying another, so who cares? People ask how much your house is worth now even when you're not selling, as if you're supposed to keep checking. Come on people, let's find something else to talk about. Whose watching Mad Men? Anyone?

Royston's portfolio website

From the archives: Early "fame"

I came across these cuttings while having a sort out the other day. The first two are from nearly 20 years ago when some friends and I ran a self-published Viz-inspired comic called DoodleBug.

We sent copies out to various media outlets, most of whom ignored us. We did get a mention on the John Peel Show though and, for some reason, five glowing reviews (not bad as we only did eight issues!) in the now defunct Record Mirror. These are the last two. Click to enlarge and read the text.



The cutting below, worth posting for the dodgy hair and glasses, is from 1994. Universal Post was a magazine for students in Sunderland. It was independent, not connected to the university, and was my first regular paying gig. For a couple of years I did a strip every fortnight (A4, landscape, two decks) and they paid me £20 for it. Not a great deal of money even then, but I put it all into a separate bank account and eventually it paid for a holiday abroad.

I submitted some of the strips in a competition for student cartoonists run by Zit comic, to which this article refers. Click to enlarge and read the text.



Check out the "comedy" pose and me pretending to draw a strip I'd finished ages ago! By the way I didn't come second, there was only one winner and everyone else was a runner up. I think the paper decided second sounded better. The bit about me being drunk is a scurrilous lie.

Royston's portfolio website

Train cartoon: Inspiration in a captive environment

"Hell is other people." So said Jean Paul Sartre. And he never had to travel on the Southeastern Trains service from London Victoria to Ramsgate.

The journeys can be pretty horrendous, especially when populated by the kind of people that don't give a stuff about anyone else. Still, at the least I got a cartoon out of this particular journey, one that appears in the current edition of The Spectator.

I travel on the train between Broadstairs and London fairly regularly and often come up with ideas for gag cartoons while doing so. I sold two to Reader's Digest recently which were both thought up on train journeys and jotted down in my notebook, though unlike this one they were not about train journeys. I think it's a good place to think up ideas because you're in a captive environment, with fewer distractions. You can't just go and make some toast or surf the internet. Of course, its easier on the quieter trips.

So, if you see me scribbling away on the Ramsgate to London service, please keep it down will you? And haven't you got any headphones for that thing?

Royston's portfolio website

Happy St. George's Day!

Here's an old cartoon on an "England" theme.

Royston's portfolio website

Back from the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival

I returned last night from a fantastic weekend at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival. Above is the 6ft by 8ft Big Board cartoon I drew (sponsored in this pic by Holland and Barrett, it seems. Click image to enlarge.)

I was pleased with the way the cartoon turned out, and it got lots of chuckles from the passing public, which is always good. Last year I followed the pencil lines a bit too slavishly, and it ended up looking a bit wonky as a result. This year I kept it much more loose, and it shows. I also added grey tone with acrylic paint, which helped.

It was the best Shrewsbury festival yet, I reckon, despite the colder weather. There was lots of superb work on show ... on the boards, the Humurals (a kind of mural of gag cartoons) and the many exhibitions, not to mention in sketchbooks ... and tablecloths!



Above: Paper tablecloth drawing by Steve Bright. The cartoonists are, clockwise from left, Clive Goddard, Ian Baker, Royston Robertson and Mike Turner. There is always lots of drawing on paper tablecloths during the evening meals at Shrewsbury. Thanks to ace cartoonist Steve Bright (former DC Thomson artist, co-creator of Bananaman) for this one. Pic by Steve Bright



Above: Cartoonists Clive Goddard, Royston Robertson and Steve Bright. As well as being a brilliant chance for the public to meet cartoonists and see them at work, it's a great chance for the cartoonists to meet up and chat. It is, after all, a fairly solitary profession for most of us. Pic by Sam Emms



Above: Clive Goddard and Royston Robertson singing the Belgian punk-pop classic Ca Plane Pour Moi at the Saturday evening sing-song. Guitar was provided by cartoonists Tim Harries, Noel Ford and Roger Penwill. Last year a bunch of us sang this song, but the only words we knew were "Ooo-ooo-eee-ooo", but this year Tim kindly provided the full lyrics. The full French lyrics, of course. There was much improvising, especially as Clive did not have his reading glasses. Pic by Gerard Whyman.

That's enough Shrewsbury coverage for now, though there may be more as more people produce their pictures! A fantastic event, and I'm already looking forward to next year ...

Royston's portfolio website

Off to the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival

Tomorrow I'm travelling up to the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival. There are events from Friday through to Sunday. I'll mainly be taking part in events on Saturday, such as "reverse caricaturing" (you stick your head through a board, cartoonist draws a body ... like the cartoon above by Roger Penwill, only without the huge shrew), drawing a cartoon as part of a huge mural known as a Humural (geddit?) and doing a 6ft by 8ft "Big Board" cartoon.

So if you're in the area, come over and say hello! Many thanks to Shrewsbury area blogger Chrissy, of Chrissy Marie's Card Craft, for the very nice plug for the festival, and for this site, yesterday.

The Official Shrewsbury Site

Shrewsbury Festival stories on the PCO blog

History cartoons: How we used to laugh

Here's a cartoon that appears in the April issue of Prospect magazine. I'm no great history buff, but history cartoons are always fun to do.

Last year I illustrated a series of articles on life in medieval times ("How we used to fight ... eat ..." etc) which appeared in the BBC's Robin Hood Adventures magazine, a tie-in with the TV series. They were fun to do and I found that when the job finished I continued to think up gag cartoons on a medieval theme!

Here are a few of the cartoons from the "How we used to ..." series.





Cartoons by Royston

Cartoonists 2008: Partial exhibition online

Some of the work from Cartoonists 2008 is now up on the Chris Beetles Gallery website. Click the links below.

Cartoonists 2008: Partial exhibition
Direct link to my section

Cartoonists 2008: The private view

Last night I attended the private view of the Cartoonists 2008 show at the Chris Beetles Gallery. This was my first time showing work at a London gallery, so it was a pretty big deal for me.

There was a small section with my work in it and a few others scattered around the gallery. Ironically, the only one I didn't spot was the one I posted here on Monday. That doesn't mean it wasn't in there though because, believe me, there was a lot of cartoons by many cartoonists in the show, every square inch of wall space seemed to be covered, so I may have missed it.

To be honest, there were far too many cartoons to take in. As I've said on this blog before, cartoons are really meant to be seen in magazines and papers, and it's a bit weird seeing so many in one go. But it does give you a chance to see magnificent works by the likes of Mike Williams and Ed McLachlan in their full glory, rather than reduced to fill a two-column space. And of course, it gives people a chance to buy cartoons, which I'm certainly not knocking!

The place was packed, with lots of people clearly enjoying the cartoons. And it was a good chance to catch up with a few cartoonist pals and meet a few others for the first time. Add to this the free champagne, and the fact that I spotted a "sold" spot on one of my cartoons, and you have my idea of a good night.

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Footnote: Probably the most surreal part of the night was seeing my biography on the wall. This is because it was written by me, just four days ago, and because they asked me to write something with humour in it, like the biography on my main website, rather than just listing where I've been published etc. So I emailed it to them, thinking, I'm sure this sillines can't be the kind of thing they're after really, and it was reproduced practically word for word. Here it is:

Royston Robertson

Born in Catterick, North Yorkshire, in 1968, Royston Robertson has been drawing cartoons for about as long as he can remember. At the age of seven, he wrote to the TV show Jim'll Fix It to ask if he could edit the Beano for a day. Jim never fixed it.

Between school and university, instead of going to work on a kibbutz, Royston ran the comic DoodleBug with a group of friends. Part fanzine, part Viz, it built up a strong following in the North East.

After university, Royston trained as a journalist, giving in to the “get a proper job” hype, and eventually worked for five years as a sub-editor at The Times. But all the time he kept drawing and selling gag cartoons and he gave up the day job in 2004.

He has been published in Private Eye, Reader's Digest, The Spectator, Prospect, New Statesman, The Oldie and many other publications throughout the world. He has also drawn cartoons for Oxford University Press, Children’s BBC and Scholastic Children’s Books.

Royston Robertson is now based in Broadstairs, Kent.

Jimmy Savile has still not replied to his letter.

Cartoons by Royston

Royston cartoons in Cartoonists 2008 exhibition

I have some original cartoons, including the one above, in an exhibition entitled Cartoonists 2008 which opens at the Chris Beetles Gallery in St James's, London, tomorrow (April 8) and runs until May 3.

It is the gallery’s second annual show devoted to the art of British cartooning, following on from the You Havin’ a Laugh? exhibition last year.

I'm in pretty humbling company, as the show features such big cartooning names as Ronald Searle, Matt, Banx, and Simon Bond, and magazine gag cartooning heroes such as Mike Williams and Ed McLachlan.

The gallery, at 8-10 Ryder Street, St James’s, London, is open from 10am-5.30pm, Monday to Saturday. Tel 020-7839 7551, email gallery@chrisbeetles.com or visit the website.

Cartoons by Royston

Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival: The countdown begins

It's April Fools' Day! And rather appropriately I'm taking the afternoon off for the AGM of the Cartoonists' Club of Great Britain. For AGM read "large number of beers with cartooning pals". Hurrah for that.

April also brings with it the 5th Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival, a long weekend of diverse cartooning activity, which runs from April 18-20.

I've mentioned the festival here before and will do so again! If you can get along to it you won't be sorry. This will be my third one and I'm looking forward to another hugely enjoyable weekend.

Around 40 professional cartoonists and caricaturists from the UK and overseas will converge on Shrewsbury to cartoon and caricature for the public.

The theme of the 2008 festival is “Art” and one of the highlights will be an exhibition of new work by festival cartoonists entitled “But is it Art?” which has already opened at the town’s Bear Steps Gallery and runs until April 26. Here's one of the cartoons I submitted for the show.

The festival offers opportunities to see artists at work, with 20, including myself, drawing on huge boards in The Square, others drawing caricatures and some running cartoon workshops.

Other highlights: The Guardian's Steve Bell will again deliver an illustrated talk. I saw his talk two years ago and it was hilarious. He really brings the "If" strips to life. Not to be missed. "Rogues Gallery", a one-man exhibition by Dave Brown, political cartoonist for The Independent, has already opened at Bear Steps and will run until April 26.

Other exhibitions include: “Stars, Strips and Yankee Doodles” – a collection of cartoons from the USA including gags and comic strips from Mad magazine and Archie comics; an exhibition of cartoons on a climate change theme; and a collection of uncaptioned visual cartoons by Belgian artists.

And of course, original artwork, prints and other cartoon merchandise will be available. All in all, an essential weekend for anyone interested in cartoons.

In the meantime, I'm going to warm up at The Cartoonist pub, off Fleet Street. So I've got a train to catch ...

Some Shrewsbury links:

The Official Site

More "But is it Art?" cartoons by PCO members

What I got up to at Shrewsbury last year