Conditions right at last for cloudspotting cartoon

"Hey, that one looks just like a visible mass of condensed water vapour floating in the atmosphere."

I got such a positive reaction to this cloudspotting cartoon which appeared in print a year ago, that I immediately tried to come up with more cartoons on the subject. The cartoon above is one of them and can be seen in this week's Private Eye.

As I've mentioned here before, there can be a large gap between a magazine taking a cartoon and it appearing in print. This one was taken in early March 2010, so it has been almost a year. That's nothing though, I think my personal record is still two years, as mentioned here, and I've heard of even longer waits from other cartoonists.

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Cloudspotters cartoon: A little background

"Ha ha, that cloud looks just like Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, 1929-1931."

This is one of two cartoons I've got in the new issue of Prospect magazine, and has to be among the more off-the-wall gags that I've had published.

I had the set-up rattling around in my head for a while i.e. someone saying a cloud looks like something, or someone, impossibly obscure, with another person looking on in bemusement. But I couldn't think of a suitable subject.

Then, and I'm not sure how this happened, I hit on the idea of pre-war cabinet ministers. As you do. A spot of Googling later and I found Frederick Pethick-Lawrence, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, 1929-1931. The name somehow just seemed to fit the bill. So, thanks Fred (he was a Labour man, he wouldn't mind that.)


Frederick Pethick-Lawrence

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